


Anything You Say

by keire_ke



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Multi, Police
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-07-16 14:44:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16088237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keire_ke/pseuds/keire_ke
Summary: The Avengers have a plan, and the plan is to eradicate Hydra, and whatever else is threatening the world. They come out, they save the day from Hydra and/or other villains, they go back to the Avengers' tower, they celebrate, then they get out the next day to do it all over again, because that's what heroes do. Occasionally something catches on fire, but these are real-life villains we are talking about, let's maybe not split hairs, officer, we are just doing our job!(modern!Bucky is a detective who does not appreciate the Avengers targeting his criminals in his precinct)





	1. The Arrest

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you [Xylia Rose](https://books-good-reality-bad.tumblr.com/) for the help! Hope you enjoyed the beta experience. :D

## Tuesday, May 24th

Tony was seriously regretting having come out for this so-called "mission".

"I am seriously regretting coming out for this so-called mission," he told JARVIS.

"As you say sir," JARVIS replied.

"Do I detect a note of sarcasm, JARVIS? From you? That is low." The outline of the building he was circling at a respectable distance trembled and refolded, as the sensors bounced off the walls, revealing more details inside, and all of them were adding up to everything they already knew, so score one for accuracy of intel, probably. Just a giant building filled with stuff. It was a glorified stake-out, at best.

"I do believe that would be due to subroutine that-dash-is-dash-low, an integral part of my core code."

"Never heard of it."

"You outlined most of my selective assessment of subjective statements protocols on December 24th, 2005, during a party, and compiled it by the end of the year."

"That doesn't sound like me."

"You attended a Christmas Eve party at the Met, which you left early with a young gentleman and his young wife, then proceeded to ignore them both while you wrote the subroutine in the limousine en route home."

"That does sound like me."

"May I also trouble you with the information that the left knee wiring is due for an upgrade and I wouldn't recommend the classic landing?"

"Noted."

So, not only was there nothing substantial to shoot, he wouldn't even get to pull of his favorite dramatic landing. It was like the Avengers didn't even need his talents on this particular venture, which, to be fair, was described a hit and run, to borrow a phrase, rather than anything else, so he couldn't even sue for false advertising.

Tony completed the final round, marked the positions of potential hostiles, and slowed the suit down to a hover over a rooftop with a good enough view. The air around the compound stilled. Or at least it should have. Tony was about to launch into a slow-motion sequence, and no pesky air vortex would cramp his style. "JARVIS, dial down the heat vision sensitivity."

"Of course, sir."

"What is the plan, Cap?" Tony's vantage point afforded him a good view of the graffitied shutters blocking the entrance to the warehouse, behind which a couple of people-shaped heat sources idled. "The guys look like they are about to exit the building."

The tiny speck-o-Steve in the corner of Tony's heat signature cam visibly turned his head, raised his hand to his ear. "Copy that. Natasha, Sam," Cap said, and although he was whispering, his voice carried through the com unit like an aria. "What's your status?"

"In position," Natasha's tinny voice replied, echoed immediately by Sam's. Tony could just barely make her out, skulking behind corner, and that was only because he had a direct line to infra-red. Strange how many things got revealed when you looked at them through heat vision. Cap's head, for example, burned up the screen like his hair was on fire, and that's on top of his core temperature being on the high end of normal range, which was funny, because people tended to call Tony the hot head. If only heat vision was part of the visible spectrum!

In that moment the smoking hot American head was turning, taking in the expanse of the parking lot before him, and, just as the door by the warehouse shutters opened, Cap breathed into the com: "On my signal. Go."

Tony let loose the ancillary "distraction only" hand cannons. These were one of his favorites totally useless things:  the projectiles emitted light, and loads of it, but the actual missile collapsed upon contact and released billows of hot smoke _backwards_. Very dramatic, very smoke-screen, did not actual harm. Tony tested them personally: getting hit by one point-blank resulted in minor burns, so really, potential hostiles, flailing on the ground was just a touch too dramatic.

A blast of hot air tore through the empty lot, upending a car, giving Falcon a boost into an impressive aerial display, sending him far above the warehouse. Why wasn't Falcon taking the flying point on this venture was quite beyond Tony. So his leg didn't have time to fully recover, big deal. Tony was flying with incomplete knee wiring!

"JARVIS tells me it's not so much incomplete as it is frayed," Falcon's voice rang in Tony' ear. "And we suspected explosives and guns, which is your wheelhouse."

"JARVIS, why is that bird reading my mind?"

"You talk to yourself, sir."

"On open coms. Signed, that bird." High in the air the Falcon did a flip and a twirl. "I have multiple hotspots showing on my scanners."

"You and me both."

On the ground Cap pirouetted through the hot cloud, and sent his shield flying. It ricocheted from a lamppost, hit the very un-vaporized door and came flying back, just as the Man with the Plan leapt over a still flailing hostile, grabbed the shield mid-flight and knocked the goon out as he landed, before turning to face the remaining hotspots rushing out of the building.

The shield cut through the air at impossible angles returning precisely to Cap's hand, sliding through the billowing smoke and at least one evil asshole's plans for a headache-free evening. Tony watched the spectacle with a certain amount of math-derived satisfaction, until he was quite certain the warehouse was empty, before hiking up his metaphorical pants and diving through the itty bitty window high on the wall. He landed in the clear space in the middle, stood, and looked around.

"Tony, where are you?" Steve asked, just as Tony, in a flash of panic, did his best impression of a Swan Lake, whirling on his toes to get picture of everything that was around him before the ominously blinking lights, glaring at him from all around, made good on their terrible, terrible promise.

"Inside – you might want to keep out of this one, Capsicle."

"What are we looking at?" Steve asked, but that was roughly when the entire building lit up like a flare. The fire wreaked havoc with his heat displays, but the experimental echolocation vision kicked in, shutting down all external audio, showing him that Steve raised his arm and Natasha came huddling under his shield, until entropy did its work and the air assault passed. "Everyone okay? What happened? Tony?"

"There may have been explosives."

"May have been explosives? Tony—"

"I did not blow them up, if that's what you mean," Tony said, walking out of the burning warehouse in his highly advanced armor made of indestructible titanium alloy painted a hot red-and-gold. He would wager a fortune this was the kind of shot for which movie makers paid their helper monkeys in solid gold bananas.

"So dramatic," Natasha told Steve quietly.

"If I didn't have to worry about fire and shock waves I would do it all the time." Steve was being honest, Tony could tell. He opened his mouth to tell JARVIS to collect footage from the nearby cameras, to make into everyone's screensavers, when a siren cut through the crackle of flames.

"Someone called the fire department?" Tony asked, making a mental note to call the fine people of the NYFD right back, and offer commendation for quick reactions.

"NYPD! On the ground, now!"

Wrong NY-asterisk-D.

A surprisingly slim man was stalking their way, gun in his extended hands, a golden badge gleaming right above a very nicely proportioned thigh. One of the hands was a very handsome metal prosthetic, mostly out of view thanks to a combination of shirt rolled up to the elbow and riding gloves, whose shifting plates reflected the fire. Michael Bay would try and fail to adequately convey the nuance of this sight his CGI guys, because it wasn't just sight, either: the faint hum of the machinery inside told a fascinating story all on its own. "JARVIS, make a note to look into prosthetics, that sound doesn't sound like it needs to be there."

"Get on the ground!"

The human component was not happy to see them, Tony put together out of context.

"Easy there, Harry," Tony started, holding his hands up.

"Stop fucking talking."

"Sir, please calm down," Steve said. The man barely looked at him, sweeping his gaze across the lot and to the burning warehouse, taking in the flames licking up at the window from the inside, and the slightly stunned Hydra personnel. "The warehouse was a Hydra secret field base."

"Geez, Rogers, anyone ever tell you what a secret is?" Natasha muttered, a small smirk tugging at her lips.

"I think I can puzzle it out for myself."

"Pal, I've got backup incoming. You might want to put your hands on your head and shut the fuck up." The gun remained in place, muzzle dangerously level with the general whereabouts of Cap's chest.

"You maybe chill there, Robocop." Tony's faceplate swung open. "The signature hour is not for another week."

"You maybe treat this seriously, tinman." Robocop told him, eyes still fixed on the fire. "The lot of you are under arrest."

"Son," Steve began, and stepped up, raising his hand. "We're sorry if we've overstepped—" and too late Tony saw the calculated predictions on the inside of his helmet kick in, a breath too late: the gun feigned left, as did Steve's arm in a simple block, that was exactly the millisecond a booted foot struck out, missed Cap's legs, came back under the knee, while the metal hand tangled in the shield's harness, around the shoulder. Suffice to say Steve ended up face-down on the ground, looking mightily confused.

"You have the right to remain silent," Robocop told him, to the usually quite arousing tune of a pair of handcuffs being slapped into place. "Anything you do or say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you. Do you understand these rights?"

Captain America was on the ground, being handcuffed. This was the greatest moment of Tony's entire life. "JARVIS, please tell me you are recording this."

"Easy there," Natasha said. The words came out accompanied by a faint hiss and crackle of her sticks, which again: Tony was fairly sure someone dropped the ball making those. He could hear them from… well, six feet and a with the aid of a com unit tuned in to monitor weapon frequencies, but _in principle_! "Let him go."

"Or what?" The policeman looked up, one knee digging into Steve's back, cast a quick look at Tony and then back at the Black Goddamned Widow, like she was your average pot dealer. "You'll fire? Shoot me in the face with a laser beam? Go ahead, make my day. Assault a police officer, in full view of all the cameras in the neighborhood, I am begging you. I'm sure your overworked PR team will love spinning that."

Miracle of miracles: the Black Widow hesitated.

"Hey, okay, I have actual experience with getting arrested, so let me." The armor hissed and spat and Tony stepped out, stretching his fingers. "Look here, Officer Hot Stuff. We're just doing our civic duty—"

"You've just torched my crime scene, and my warehouse of evidence, and quite possibly my informant. But I'm sorry, you were explaining how you were not obstructing justice?"

Okay, there was possibly maybe a slight miscalculation involved. "I have pictures of the insides, you can see the contents clear as day—"

"Stand down," Steve told the cement under his face.

"Steve?"

"Stand down."

The officer stared at Steve's unmoving back for a moment, then Captain America was unceremoniously yanked up by the harness on his uniform and helped to his feet, albeit roughly. Natasha's hands were empty and they were down, and Tony was standing in front of his suit with his arms crossed, still unconvinced, because goddamned Hydra, punk.

"Look, I'm not saying Dunkin Donuts here is insane or anything, but we are sort of busy? Saving the world and all? I would love to go downtown, but normally I would prefer the outing to include a restaurant, I'm just saying."

"You want to know how many of those guns were riffs on Iron Man armor?" Dunkin Robonuts checked the handcuffs one more time and holstered his gun. "Because I can offer a pretty accurate count, wise-guy, and I, for one, would love to know how proprietary Iron Man designs got out onto the streets. Because I'm _sure_ that happened without your knowledge."

"What—Is—"

Tony half-turned his head, which coincidentally let some fumes invite themselves into his gaping mouth, to find an elderly man with his head bent so low it was practically between his knees. He was holding both hands up though, and one of them was wrapped around a gleaming golden badge.

"Barnes—" the old man wheezed. "You run so—fast. Why take—the car?"

Robocop waited, politely, until the man's breath slowed from a death-wheeze to an average old person wheeze. "You got your handcuffs?"

"Whatchu need handcuffs for?"

Barnes shot the man a flat look.

"I'm extremely kinky, and burning warehouses turn me on. What do you think?"

"You're arresting them?"

"Fucking A."

"But they are the Avengers!"

Finally, a policeman with sense! "Yes, thank you, I was just saying that—"

"I am not in the mood. You are under a fucking arrest, and really, Mr. Stark, with your rap sheet, you should know: mouth should be shut until your piranhas get here."

Tony's mouth did close at that, and his eyes felt like they were about to bug right out of his skull. Piranhas! No one disrespected his team of goddamned megalodons! Speaking of, he really hoped JARVIS was ringing them right now. "Excuse you—"

"You are veering into resisting arrest now. No skin off my ass, but you should know that doesn't help."

"You cannot arrest the Avengers!" the elderly detective protested, even as he reached into his back pocket and handed over the extra handcuffs, so thanks for the air support, Detective Old Detective.

"Fucking watch me," Officer Murder Thighs said, and slapped the bracelets on Natasha without blinking an eye, and okay, Officer Murder Thighs was growing on Tony. A little. Maybe. Still, this was not the time to get arrested, and where was the Falcon, for that matter? Natasha was giving the detective a polite, disinterested look that could mean no less than she knew exactly where Sam was, so Tony sidled to her and waggled his eyebrows, while concealing a cawing noise with his fist.

When he finally stopped Natasha tilted her head and Tony heard a whispered "Uh—Steve?" flowing out of her earpiece.

"It might be wiser to cooperate with the arrest, Tony," Natasha said then, eyebrows raised, metaphorical riding crop in hand. An even fainter "roger that" sounded in her ear. So Wilson would not be joining them, solid choice.

"Smart," the detective grunted and turned to Stark. "You gonna live up to how smart you brag you are, or are we going to have a problem?"

The light in the suit blinked once, on the right side, and went off. Good old JARVIS. He knew exactly when to call for legal aid. "Just so you know, I have already called my lawyers."

"Happy to hear that. They normally advise you to resist, or…?"

"I'm cooperating," Tony said, holding out his empty hands for inspection. "I am cooperating all over."

"Good to know."

"Barnes—"

"Lee, either help me, or shut up."

"Kids," Detective Lee told Steve, while shaking his head. "Back in my day the young had respect for their elders."

Cap smiled at that, just a little, with the very corner of his mouth. "Sir, I can tell you from direct personal experience of the past that is definitely not true."

"Damn straight it ain't." Barnes smirked, then caught himself in the act and switched gears to glare at Steve instead. "Didn't expect to hear you say that though."

"I did get arrested—"

"Six times, I can read. I just didn't think you were gonna bring that up."

"Hold up, hold up—Captain Tightpants got arrested?"

"Keep that up and I will add disrespecting Captain Tightpants to your charges." Barnes raised the metal hand to his shoulder and pressed a button on the relict of prehistorical remote communicators. Seriously, when was that thing form, dinosaur age? "Dispatch, where's my backup?"

"Two cars, first ETA one minute," the radio crackled on the last word, before the signal could stabilize, and good god, how did those people even work. "You got the scumbag?"

"Sort of. Can you add the fire department and an ambulance to the order?"

"Hey!"

"This ain't a pizza joint!" A long-suffering sigh followed. "They are on their way as well. Are you okay?"

"You're the best, doll! Yeah, me and Lee are both fine, but four suspects are out cold."

"Don't call me doll," said the crackling female voice on the other end. She sounded like she was smiling, which, fair enough – Detective Questionable Judgement Except Thighs lived up to his name, and he had a face that Tony was finding attractive, and Tony was a straight man. Well. Mostly straight. Maybe a one on the Kinsey scale. Although there was that episode in college, and Rhodey, but that thing with Rhodey didn't count, they shook on it. And yeah, he spent that night with that nice young couple, even though he was distracted by JARVIS, and—holy shit, Tony _was_ a little bisexual.

"Never to your face, promise," the detective said, smiling, which really didn't help Tony's minor sexuality crisis.

"Barnes, I have serious reservations about this," Detective Lee said. "They are the Avengers!"

"Yes, thank you, Lee, I do frequent the cereal aisle, I know who they are."

"Yeah, listen to your elders," Tony said. "Arresting us is not smart, what if the world is in peril?"

"I presume the dire state of the world is why you're now in the business of chasing muggers?"

"A warehouse full of unregistered weapons is hardly—"

But Steve was ducking his head, which meant he was guilty as sin of the crime in question.

"You have got to be kidding me!" Tony threw his hands in the air so hard he almost dislocated his shoulders. "Seriously?"

"They stole an old lady's bag."

"Yeah, woe is the fate of the planet while kittens still climb trees." Detective Robocop Barnes rolled his eyes and pointed the prosthetic at the warehouse. "Lee, you mind having a look around whatever part of the rubble is least on fire?"

"With my lungs!?"

"I'm not asking you to climb into it! Just go and check on those unfortunate assholes, I'd like to interrogate at least one!"

"Kids these days," Detective Old Detective grumbled as he ambled away.

And then there were more sirens and a police car rolled into the flaming lot, spitting out a couple of uniformed men, closely followed by an ambulance.

"You have got to be kidding me," said the first man out, a tall, burly ex-circus performer – clearly – with a surprisingly flattering handlebar mustache. He was in a proper cop uniform, the one exception being a bowler hat, which frankly worked very well with the mustache, kudos to that man's stylist. "Barnes, you crazy motherfucker!"

"Flatter me later, Dum Dum."

"You—"

"I'm gonna tell you what I told Lee – fucking watch me."

The man referred to as Dum Dum, and who absolutely should change his name to Officer Handlebar Mustache, shared a look with his unequally mustachioed driver and wordlessly opened the car door. "Um. Captain. If you'd be so kind…?"

Steve shook his head, but he seemed to have committed to this farce. Natasha stepped up and slid into the backseat all the way to the opposing window, and Steve followed. An extra pair of cuffs materialized and forced Tony to evaluate its potential to excite, though not by much. He would say that the ones he owned were infinitely more comfortable, but then he eyed the back of the police cruiser and shuddered. Three people in a back seat. This was inhumane treatment.

Still, Cap ordered the stand down, so down he would stand. Well. Sit. He started towards the scant inch of space beside the Captain, only for Detective Robocop to stop him.

"What about the tin can, you gonna leave it here?"

"It won't fit in your tiny car."

"So your plan is to leave a weapon stuffed with lasers and bombs just laying around a parking lot regularly visited by secret terrorist organizations? Is this one of the famous Stark Industries giveaways?"

Tony straightened his back and, unfortunately, still had to tilt his head up far enough to look Detective Asshat in the eye. "I will have you know that this suit will stand here, unmoving, until I personally show up and take it away. And I know this for a fact, because biometric locks are a thing, and anyway, it won't move without me."

"So it will stand right here until probably tomorrow."

Tony rolled his eyes. "That's what I said."

"Just making sure." Barnes reached into the front of the car, pulled out a sheet of yellow paper, scribbled a few lines on it, tore the page out, folded it in half and dropped it into the open mask. "This being a restricted zone, parking is only permitted for delivery and overnight parking requires special dispensation by the dock authorities." He dropped the pen and the rest of the paper on the seat and stalked off, to where Detective Old Detective was making notes by the light of the fire.

The Facial Hair brigade was clearly the same kind of night Tony was, which is to say one straight from that British comedy thing that took things way over the top. Tony was in no way surprised that they opted to keep their eyes on Robocop throughout – someone definitely should.

"Dugan, Barnes just wrote Iron Man a ticket," said Officer Forgot to Shave.

"Seems that way."

"Is this the real life?"

"Is this just fantasy?" Officer Handlebar Mustache crooned back, a huge grin on his face.

"Caught in a landslide—"

Detective Robocop returned, bearing with him the twisted reality cloud that clearly loved following him around. "Everything good? They didn't spray you with some alien shit yet?"

"Not yet."

"Take them back to the station. I'll wait for the other car, have them take the other bozo, then I'm gonna have a look around."

The two officers exchanged looks and then both directed their gaze at the detective.

"Uh—I don't mean to be rude or anything, but what do you want us to do with…" Officer Handlebar Mustache indicated Steve an Natasha with his thumb, while Barnes stared at him blankly.

"Book them."

"Right. Okay. But what specifically—"

"Get them into holding, take down their names and identification."

"Right, right. And if anyone asks…?"

Barnes kept staring at Officer Handlebar Mustache without blinking a touch longer than Tony was reliably informed social convention allowed, before switching to Officer Forgot to Shave and repeating the process. "Seriously?"

"I'm just—" Officer Handlebar Mustache began, but the other officer beat him to it.

"Barnes, all due respect, but they are the Avengers. We can't just arrest them!"

"We just did," Barnes replied, then, in the face of obvious feet dragging, sighed in defeat. "Fine, whatever. Wait ten minutes, I'll have a chat with the budding arsonist squad, then I'll go with you."

Tony was sure they were all a little gratified to see both the officers exhale in relief once the creepy cyborg detective dude stalked off in pursuit of the arsonist squad. NYPD truly was committed to diversity. Who knew?

"So out of idle curiosity," Tony asked, staring after the detective, "Are there hot cops calendars?"

Down in the car Cap swallowed a bug which fought for its life and prevailed, emerging from his mouth with a bark of "Stark!"

"It's a reasonable question, the man fills out his pants in a way that is aesthetically pleasing."

"I'm afraid not, sir, the commissioner felt it would undermine our authority."

"The fire department does it," Natasha pointed out.

"They get to rely on the threat of fiery death to be obeyed, ma'am."

"I suppose that's reasonable."

"Now what?" Steve asked quietly, probably leaning towards Natasha.

"Don't ask me; you gave the order."

"You verified the intel!"

"Are you questioning my intel?"

"I don't know, is it unquestionable?"

"Hey," Officer Handlebar Mustache said, leaning down. "I dunno if you lot have been arrested before, but the Miranda rights continue to apply, so I'm gonna have to testify that I heard you questioning your own intel. Sir."

"You just helped to arrest us." Natasha stuck out her neck and blinked. "We were just doing our job."

Officer Handlebar Mustache puffed out his substantial chest so hard his mustache flexed. "All due respect, ma'am, but so are we."

"So there's no chance you'll open the side door and let us out?"

"Sorry ma'am," said Officer Forgot to Shave. "Can't do that."

"I can pull some strings, maybe get the paperwork down to a minimum."

"Detective Barnes is the arresting officer, it's his call."

"There could be an urgent call to action any minute."

"Yes, probably, but that would leave me to deal with Detective Barnes."

"Detective Barnes seems to have too much of a temper for a police officer."

It was at that point that Officer Handlebar Mustache went from a run-of-the-mill doughnut lover to a potential recipient of a Rhodey Award for True Public Servant in Tony's estimation. "Nice try, ma'am, but I'm not falling for that."

"So what you're saying is Detective Barnes scares you more than I do?" Natasha offered the man the smile of a cobra peeking out of the mouth of a doe. Many a man had skittered in fear when faced with the prospect of that face continuing to smile, but Officer Handlebar Mustache just grinned.

"Eh, he's alright."

Welcome to the goddamned upside down!

"You're recording all that, aren't you?" Steve asked the other cop, who seemed to be just as transfixed as Tony himself was, and also in possession of a body cam. He seemed equally committed to getting this moment preserved for future generations, going by the way he was angling his chest to record both his partner and Natasha, a difficult filmmaking feat.

"Yes sir. Sorry sir."

Rogers let out a long sigh, which, if Tony knew the man at all, meant he was also shaking his head.

The second car arrived meanwhile, and Tony was unceremoniously invited to make himself comfortable in the back, which he did, with gusto, while the Facial Hair Squad updated their colleagues on the proceedings. There were a lot of unflattering things said about their mutual friend, the detective, quite a few of them conveyed via facial ticks and hand gestures, but not enough to stop the police from slamming the door on Tony and getting into the car themselves.

"I have to tell you, I am not loving being arrested," Tony said, pursuing the instant rapport he used to have with his arresting officers.

"Sorry to hear the service is not up to your standards, sir," the cop in the driver's seat said, grinning wide. He also had dealings with Team Facial Hair, because his upper lip spouted the most French of all mustaches, which rather complimented the way he dropped his Rs.

"I don't suppose you have a minibar back here?"

"I'm afraid not. But if you have a music preference, I would be happy to oblige you."

Where it not for the handcuffs, Tony would have enjoyed the ride a lot more, once the positively mediaeval iPod hooked up to the radio started blaring AC/DC. The precinct, on the other hand, was unbelievably boring. Part of it might have been because it was late, and the few zombie cops were wandering about and staring at nothing, though that changed when the first neuron fired and the entire station stopped in its zombie tracks to stare as the Avengers were marched in, cuffs and all. Which, okay: this was not a first for Tony. Not the cuffs and incidentally not even the being marched into a station. Tony lead a rich life. He had never visited this particular station though, given that most of his misdemeanors occurred either in Cambridge, or Upper Manhattan, where the standards were a little higher, the floors a little cleaner, and the company a little less… street. He made a mental note to avoid committing crimes and/or misdemeanors in Brooklyn. Good god, he could get mugged at this police station!

"What the fuck?" asked the second most British voice Tony had the pleasure of hearing in his daily life, just as Tony's pair of cops nudged him forward, into a depressingly photogenic lineup.

"Nothing to see here, good people of the 107th, Barnes will be along shortly; he'll probably want to make a statement, I know nothing," Officer Handlebar Mustache announced, gesturing for Captain America to enter the monkey cage, filled with hookers, pick-pockets and drunkards. "Please don't sue."

"Barnes—Is he out of his frigging mind?" A blonde bombshell hissed, coming towards them. "He arrested the Avengers?"

"Oh look, Detective Barnes!"

"Lorraine, I need them processed now," Detective Robocop barked at the woman.

"They—"

"Yes, them."

"… can we do that?"

Robocop's eyes flashed a shade of silver hitherto only seen in thermometers and skies about to spit out the kind of thunder that levels buildings. "Can you cite me a ruling that indicates the law doesn't apply if you're wearing fetish gear?"

"It shouldn't," one of the prostitutes said flatly, arms crossed over her leather somewhat-clad chest.

Robocop rolled his eyes. "Laura, we've been through this, once a guy passes out that's a hard 'dolphin' on the flogging, I don't care what your pimp wrote on the wall."

"Dolphin, really?" Officer Forgot To Shave asked. "Wasn't it 'crabcake'?"

"It's 'Skynet' these days," Laura said. "We changed it after the last raid. Guess why."

" _Fetish gear_!?" Tony hissed in a voice too high to be legally allowed to have come out of his lungs, and to his immense relief the blond police lady seemed to be about as close to losing it as he was.

"I'll book 'em," Officer Handlebar Mustache said, quite possibly saving the woman from combustion. He turned to the monkey cage, mustache trembling. "Captain Rogers, if you could come with me, please?"

Steve, the precious boy scout that he was, stepped up, head high. Goddamned be his golden hair and steel resolve.

"Everyone's a goddamned Mary fucking Poppins all of sudden," the detective muttered, hands folded.

"C'mon, Bucky—" Mustache Man whined, hand hovering right by Steve's elbow, respectfully, at a distance.

"Fine, whatever, I'll go with you. In the meantime, Lorraine, I think the rest of them will really enjoy the story of your auditions for American Idol." Barnes actually grinned at that, and Tony was not liking that grin. Please let the woman be offended, he begged as Cap was hauled out and down the bullpen to get his perfect hands dirty. This station probably still used ink, the Neanderthals.

"You are an asshole, Barnes," Officer Bombshell yelled, pulling out her phone. "A complete and total asshole. It's a shame you didn't go with us, because Simon Cowell, oh my god. You have no idea. I always thought that was a pose, but that man would snark at the Queen for not being royal enough. So anyway, we spent the whole day in line, the whole day, you have no idea…"

"Is there any way we can shut her up?" Tony asked, because six minutes in the story was gaining steam and the line, apparently, had only moved six feet.

"Offer her money and fame," Natasha quipped, and settled on a bench next to a sleeping drunk. "Or maybe don't, it could backfire."

"I am holding you responsible."

"Relax." Natasha's eyes were closed, head tipped back against the seat.

"We have been arrested! I got a ticket!"

"How much was it?"

"I don't know, a banana? A thousand dollars? I don't normally get ticketed!"

"I know for a fact that's not true."

"What?"

"Happy gets ticketed on the regular, he's got to staple the tickets together, sing the requests, and send them to your personal ticket accountant."

This was new information. "I have a personal ticket accountant?"

"Who did you think handled your fines?"

Fair point. "How do you know?"

"I slip my tickets into his piles. It's less work than putting them through SHIELD."

"SHIELD pays your tickets?"

"Up until it had to be set on fire because of the whole Hydra mess, yeah. Now I don't exactly have more time to find parking spots, hence Happy's ticket pile."

"Barnes is going to love this," one of the cops muttered to Officer No Facial Hair, the one who hummed along to AC/DC and was therefore Tony's pick for unnamed American Idol contestant number four, and they both sniggered.

"But, we were supposed to be quiet. Sorry fellas."

"It's alright, ma'am."

"…and that was not a good move, trust me, because there were clowns in front and behind us…"

Steve was ushered back by the Robocop himself, after the clowns in front of the line reportedly whipped up their false noses, but before the clowns in the back of the line allegedly took up the whipped cream containers, and Natasha was whisked away in his place.

"…so Dugan starts to hum, and that man knows his humming notes. We're a barbershop quartet, quintet occasionally, Barnes is easily the third-to-second best singer, on his really good days, but he is also depressingly married to the job, and he is not fond of clowns, which was a good thing, as…"

"I take it I missed the best part?" Natasha asked Steve when the officers brought her back to the cell, and waved at Tony.

"Debatable. We are about to hear where the pies went."

That definitely wasn't fair, Tony also wanted to know where the pies went! Instead he was treated to even more standing still as an amateur photographer took a moment to adjust lighting, snap a few reasonably flattering shots, and scan his fingerprints.

"Full name, please. Do you have any ID on you?"

Tony has never been so insulted in his entire life.

"You know who I am!"

And to make matters worse, Officer Bombshell was still going on when Tony was returned to the holding cell, thoroughly traumatized by the blatant show of disrespect.

"Can anyone here shoot me, please?" he muttered, collapsing onto the bench by Natasha, who was already snoring. Not team spirit. None. Tony was alone, awash in the wild sees of being the genius the society just wouldn't accept as one of its own, forever doomed to stand guard over those unable to appreciate his work.

"…and then the dogs just run off, you know, like they were trained to do. It was amazing, did you know five chihuahuas can literally cause a riot? Anyway, so Gabe—" she gestured to the officer who actually shaved, "—is allergic to dogs, and Monty refuses to accept chihuahuas as dogs—"

His life would come to tragic end at a dirty police station, he would die surrounded by people PT Barnum pretended to care about for a buck, nothing would make this better, nothing ever.

"Good evening."

Oh thank god, Maria Hill was here.

"I understand there has been a problem at the docks?" she asked, prim, proper, and put-together despite the hour, totally confirming Tony's theory that she was, in fact, a robot, one that slept under her desk, plugged into a socket.

"Good evening, ma'am. Yes, I'm afraid there has been a problem." Officer Handlebar Mustache stood to greet her, all smiles and mustache. "Can I help you?"

"I'm taking the Avengers with me."

"I would like to state upfront that it was not my fault," Tony said, holding up his hands, the same hands he was having sterilized to hell and back after he got out of here. Who knew who's been touching the fingerprint scanners, murderers and jaywalkers, or worse. "It was not my idea to target that particular ware—"

"Anything you say, Stark," Natasha said, jamming what felt and tasted like her entire leather glove into his mouth. "That's a pretty memorable line."

"I have nothing to hide!" Tony protested once he managed to spit the glove out.

"Consider trying," Barnes snarked under his breath, which immediately put him on Hill's radar.

"I understand you are the arresting officer?"

"Indeed."

Maria offered her most charming smile. "Would you be so kind as to open this door?"

Robocop folded his arms once again and stared her down. "I do not believe you are a solicitor, and I don't think you have an order signed by a judge."

"I think we can trust the Avengers to sign their own recognizance."

"One, I'm still gonna need that order, and two, Stark has skipped bail before."

"I was twenty! And drunk! And in the middle of my PhD!"

"…three, considering they just took out a warehouse along with the surrounding property, I have concerns about letting them loose on the town. Ma'am."

"Detective, I appreciate your concerns—"

"Um—Barnes?" Officer Bombshell raised her hand from her desk. "You have a phone call. It's the captain."

Barnes glared in Hill's general direction, before stalking to the woman and taking the receiver from her hand. They must have been really worried about crime at this station, the receiver was tied to the rest of the phone with a string, Tony thought, before a vague, barely used corner of his memory supplied information about _landlines_. Good god, technological progress was amazing.

"Captain," Robocop said into the receiver, while a loud, insistent voice from the other end, muffled by the inefficiency of the telecommunications via outdated technology, seemed to be delivering a blistering series of commands.

"Yes, sir." Barnes set the phone down, without further ado, and turned to the enraptured crowd. "The captain of this precinct would like to relay his regards, and, as a gesture of good will, offers to accept recognizance in lieu of bail," he intoned.

"Ten bucks say there were at least three 'fucks' in whatever he just heard," Officer Handlebar Mustache muttered, grinning inanely.

"Four," Officer No Facial Hair quipped, and shook his pal's hand.

"Thank you, Detective," Hill said.

The crowd of uniforms, as one, breathed out. Barnes did not move, and clearly was not going to move, so it was Officer Handlebar Mustache who had to open the holding cell and usher Tony, Natasha and Steve out into the open.

"Well, that was a fun adventure. Let's never go there again." Tony told Natasha, as the blond cop set paper forms before them. "I did not agree to participate in a trial."

"He's kidding," Hill said immediately, and through the combined force of hers and Natasha's glares Tony signed the paper promising he will, in fact participate.

"That precinct could do with a little more funding," Natasha told Steve, when he was signing for his shield, confiscated as they entered the station. The man behind the crate handed it over with a reverent glow in his eyes, stroking the edge in a way that would have been creepy, were it not for the tear-filled buttery glow in his wide eyes. At least someone's night was going well.

"I've seen worse."

"So have I, doesn't mean this one was adequate." Natasha signed her name with a flourish and collected her two guns, a knife, battle bracelets, and two electric sticks in return. "Thank you, officer."

"They made me sign my name on paper. Paper! What is this, the middle ages?"

"It's a fun story."

"Am I the only one concerned we just got arrested?"

"Nothing will come out of it," Hill said.

"Yeah, but, we got arrested. Shouldn't we have diplomatic immunity?"

"Are you a diplomat?"

"Well, no, but—"

"There you go, then."

"Can they actually charge us?" Steve asked. "I know we did blow up that warehouse, but it wasn't intentional."

"Depends how stubborn that detective actually is," Hill said, opening the back door of a limo. Happy, propped against the driver's door, waved his hand over the roof, covering a yawn with the other.

"Well, at least I know someone is not a robot."

"Get in the car, Stark."

Tony got in the car. He sat, he stared out the window, he got out when prompted, he got into the elevator, up into his suite and into bed, right by Pepper, who definitely did not snore, not even a little bit.

And then, just as he was teetering on the edge of sleep, a stray thought wandered in and bit him on the ass. Tony sat up in the bed, struck. "JARVIS! The suit!"

## Tuesday, May 31st

Early morning was the kind of chore that should excuse a man from participating in whatever followed. Tony sleepwalked to the coffee machine and poured himself a cup, which he cradled in his palms and treasured, and would have continued to treasure, had it not inexplicably ran out. He filled it again and didn't make the mistake of putting down the pot this time.

"Long night?" Natasha asked, perched on a barstool with a mug of tea in one hand, a tablet in the other.

"I haven't slept yet."

"And that fact doesn't concern you."

"My booster system was significantly improved, so no, it doesn't."

Tony took a sip of his coffee, and looked at her again.

"You're wearing your bathrobe."

"It's still early."

"You aren't usually out of your rooms in the altogether."

"I am wearing a bathrobe."

"I meant the thing you do to your face to make it all uniform in color."

"Does my mild acne offend you?"

"No. Not even a little."

"Glad to hear that." The tea was rocked, swirled, sipped. Tony attempted the same with his own mug, succeeding in narrowly avoiding a spill.

"Why, though? You have your own kitchen."

"Ran out of tea."

Another neuron fired. "Why are you here though? Groceries are delivered."

"I prefer to get my own."

Tony wouldn't even know where to begin getting his own groceries. He had some theories it involved the very colorful and weird lit place two blocks away.

"Fair enough." Sleep, the sneaky asshole, was catching up to him, and would not be persuaded to let up for another hour. Or twenty. "I think I'm gonna turn in, actually," he said.

"Lo and behold. I'm sure Pepper will be grateful."

"Why would she?"

"You have a date tonight, at that new restaurant."

Oh fuck. Tony scrambled madly for his phone, realized he didn't have it, opened his mouth to ask JARVIS, remembered that Pepper had been very empathic in regards to discussing their private plans in public, and the designated Avenger floors definitely counted as public, and continued to fumble for a few moments, until Natasha took pity. "The date isn't for twelve hours. Go get some sleep, you'll be right as rain."

"Right. Thanks. Coffee."

She slid from her perch, steaming tea balanced in her hand, and started towards the elevator. Tony yawned and followed, hugging the coffeepot to his chest.

"This coffee isn't very strong," Natasha said as the elevator door dinged open. "Don't you have an espresso machine in the lab? My floor, please."

"I needed a medium-sized coil for a project."

"When was this?"

With the nature of time who could say exactly, so Tony merely shrugged. That was also when the elevator came to a stop, a little earlier than it should have, considering that yep, only Natasha specified a destination. Much more concerning was the fact that the door opened to reveal Detective Robocop, all dolled up in a fancy uniform, a cap under his elbow, standing right next to a barefoot, gym-attire wearing Steve.

"Oh god, you are not here to civilly forfeit my coffee, are you?" Tony asked, pressing the pot against his chest until the clink of glass against metal reminded him he shouldn't.

"Has it been involved in any crimes?" Robocop said amicably, stepping into the elevator after an initial period of silent staring. Rogers followed for some reason, shoulders stiff.

"JARVIS, the common room please."

"Of course, Captain."

A jaunty little tune filled the space, and Tony's very reasonable worry about the caffeine supply and the long, sticky arm of the law did a somersault when the elevator reversed direction and started going up, back to the common floor. He tightened his grip on the coffee pot and inhaled the contents of the cup, just in case.

"So, did the questioning go well?" Natasha said, taking a long, judgmental sip of her tea, staring the detective down.

Steve, inexplicably, went a little red around the ears. "Yes."

"Wait, what questioning? The charges were dropped! I got a long lecture from Hill about it." Tony unfolded his arms, sloshed the contents of the cup onto the wall, refilled, and looked up to see the reshuffling of the elevator had brought Steve into his immediate vicinity, while the detective was giving him a thoroughly unimpressed look over Cap's shoulder. "If the police have any business with you, tell them to contact the lawyers first. No offence, Robocop, but them's the breaks."

"I will keep that in mind," Robocop said.

Natasha hummed.

Steve huffed.

The elevator dinged. "Common room," JARVIS announced merrily, as the door slid open.

"Coffee?" Steve asked, gesturing to the kitchen area. "We have the machine that steams the milk, too."

"A cappuccino would be great, thanks." Robocop set the cap on the counter and Tony withdrew back into the elevator, still hugging his coffeepot.

"Jesus, not even the lawyers come around this early, and I thought they represented robot-Americans."

"Detective Barnes strikes me as an early riser."

"Still, Steve shouldn't talk to the police without a lawyer. I'm not admitting to anything, but there are some illegal substances in this building."

"Relax, Stark," Natasha said, as the elevator dinged and opened onto her floor. "Steve has Detective Barnes well in hand."

"Clint left a bong in Cap's apartment as a joke last week."

Natasha sipped at her tea and smiled. "I'm sure nothing Detective Barnes is holding against Steve is admissible in court."

"You are seriously underestimating prosecutors, Romanoff," Tony yelled, before the door slid closed. "JARVIS, please call my legal team and let them know Robocop was here, will you?"

"The appropriate parties will be notified, sir. Now, I would strongly recommend at least six hours of sleep before any further engagements that require cognitive functions."

"Right you are, JARVIS."

Tony got out of the elevator, brushed his teeth, and got into his bed, coffee safe on the bedside table, and clapped his hands to kill the lights. He had a date tonight. Let Rogers deal with the police, if he was so keen.


	2. Off the Record

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reality of having been arrested is, chiefly, boredom. Unless you are Steve. In which case it is the perfect opportunity to stoke the fire and prepare the gasoline.

## Tuesday, May 24th

Steve had been arrested six times in his life. He had no regrets; what he had, in fact, was a distant sense of satisfaction and a sense of fulfillment. There was a part of him that lived for the moments when an angry man with a brass button signifying his rank came stalking his way, spitting regulation into his face. It made him feel like he was doing something, like he was contributing. He was being heard, goddamn it.

Which is not to say he had no respect for the rule of law, of course not. Steve had a healthy respect for the law and authority figures. He was a Captain, and he had earned that rank, eventually, and proved that he was worthy of it, and he was worthy because he, as an authority figure, earned and kept the respect of his subordinates. So the concept of authority did not phase him one bit. He could and would take orders, dismissals, and discipline from his superiors, if they deserved it.

He had absolutely no problem telling them to fuck off, to their face, if they deserved it, either. Respect and authority was, in his view, a mutually consensual relationship. Respect had to be earned by more than just having the right brass button. There was a grace period, right between the moment he met them to the moment they did something to lose him, when he was perfectly willing to follow commands. Occasionally, the grace period would only last from the moment Steve laid eyes on someone until they opened their mouths – so it was technically possible Steve was already gearing up for a fight before he technically saw a person – but it was there.

And now this. His first arrest in the twenty-first century… Truth be told he was finding the experience educational. The century had spread even to jails: the holding cell was comfortably spacious and clean, the company pleasant – including the angry prostitute and the drunken couple in the corner, they passed the disorderly stage and were now exchanging pet names – no one'd called him a dirty mick yet, and likely wouldn't, times having changed and all. Not so much he wasn't glad they left Sam out of it, but they changed plenty.

"Captain Rogers, if you could come with me, please?" said the officer who drove him and Natasha to the station. T. Dugan, according to his nameplate.

Detective Barnes rolled his eyes, and muttered something under his breath, to which Officer Dugan could only respond with a pleading "c'mon!", but also with a firm nudge to Steve's shoulder. Ha! Shoulder nudges were like handshakes, and this one was firm and confident, but also carefully calibrated to establish authority and well within the limits of the respectable. It was going to happen, then. They were getting processed, per the detective's orders, and the protests cropping up on occasion were perfunctory, at best.

He followed the officer out of the bullpen and down a corridor, eyes fixed on the wall ahead. Detective Barnes was following two steps behind him; he could hear the whirring of his prosthetic, and the steady thump of his boots against the linoleum.

"Tony scanned the warehouse before we engaged," Steve said quietly once he was ushered into a narrow room with a lighting setup on one end. Officer Dugan started fiddling with the camera at the other end, poking at the attached laptop and adjusting the tripod, while the detective started up another computer in the corner, pretty much leaving the two of them open to an attack, had Steve been so inclined. "There was no one inside."

Detective Barnes finished typing in his password and looked up. "What was that?"

"You said that we might have killed your informant, but Tony has infra-red vision. He would have seen a person inside."

"Okay, I need you to stay still, Captain."

The camera flashed. Steve clenched his eyes and wished for eyedrops.

"Now from the side, please," Officer Dugan said.

Steve turned, obediently. From this angle the detective was a dim suggestion in the corner of his eye, a white rectangle with a splash of silver on the side.

"Regardless of any personnel, there was evidence in that warehouse," the white rectangle said eventually.

"The guns might still be salvageable."

"The guns might, but not the fingerprints. I'm sure it was exciting to set everything on fire, lord knows I would do it every day if someone was willing to film me against it, but you have made my job exponentially harder."

"I am sorry about that."

"Are you? This wasn't the first case I was forced to abandon because of you, and I know I lodged at least one formal complaint."

Steve frowned. "We don't go anywhere until we are absolutely positive that we are dealing with Hydra."

"Yeah, Hydra." Detective Barnes was doing something potentially bordering on harassment with the way he was staring Steve down; his eyes were pale, but in the dim room they seemed like quicksilver. "The problem with that is after DC Hydra was exposed, so they could no longer operate as Hydra cells, they had to burrow. The places you targeted were hideouts of the more prominent members, those with enough clout to take over or at least get in good with the leaders and use the resources they now had for their own purposes. So, the Avengers went in, engaged with Hydra, Hydra returned fire, the hideout was literally razed to the ground."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

He held Steve's gaze and continued as though he hadn't spoken. "And what that means, Captain, is that the non-Hydra thieves, drug-dealers and murderers, those who were not there that day, lost their hubs, their records, and paper trail that connected them to thefts, drugs and murders. They will lay low for a while, and then I pretty much have to wait for them to kill more people, sell more drugs, and steal more shit before I can do anything about it."

"If you know who they are," Steve started, and instantly regretted it, doubly so when the detective's eyes flashed in the dim corner of the room. "Sorry."

"It's the darndest thing, ain't it, how the judges insist on seeing some evidence, even when the police are _absolutely positive_ they got the right bad guy."

And it was the darndest thing, that even when Steve went back to the holding cell, even when Maria Hill had them sign the paper promising they will be in court when called, even after they went home… even then he felt quicksilver running down his back.

## Wednesday, May 25th

As impulse control was not in Steve's nature, the day after he was arrested for the first time in the twenty-first century he found himself back at the precinct, against lawyer advice.

"Captain Rogers!" The officer manning the reception desk was unfamiliar, and star-struck, and also mildly terrified, which, per Natasha's people-reading seminars, suggested she had heard about the events of yesterday.

"Good afternoon." Steve made the effort to take his hands out of his pockets and straighten up. "I was wondering if I could see Detective Barnes."

"Oh—is he in trouble?"

"Not that I know of."

"I'll call upstairs." The officer punched a few digits into her phone, smiling nervously at Steve the entire time. "Hi! Is Barnes in? There's someone in to see him. Oh, okay. Yeah, thanks." She set the receiver down. "I'm sorry, Detective Barnes is not in. Would you like to leave a message?"

The door to the station, the door Steve had at his back, opened, then shut, the universe took a breath, and a rivulet of cold, liquid metal slithered down Steve's spine.

"Captain."

Steve turned. "Detective Barnes."

The man lifted his sunglasses and perched the on top of his head. "Should you be here, without a lawyer present?"

"I've been advised not to come, but if I absolutely must, not to mention the case and to ensure you are off duty."

Detective Barnes blinked. "I don't follow."

"I would like to talk to you. In private. Off the record."

More blinking. The detective looked at the officer on duty, then back at Steve. "Sure. There's a coffee shop a block away."

"Lead the way."

"Five minutes? I'll drop the bag and badge upstairs. Since we're going… off the record."

"I'll be here."

Detective Barnes nodded, and disappeared up the stairs. Steve watched him go, somewhat surprised by that, but then should he be? The detective was a very handsome man, well-dressed, and in peak physical condition, to have been able to lay him out like he did. He had the element of surprise, of course, Steve normally wouldn't go down quite so easily, but still. He was fit.

"Did he really arrest you yesterday? All of the Avengers?" the desk officer asked, in a hushed voice, one eye on the staircase.

"Only three of us," Steve said.

"Wow."

"Indeed."

"But he's not going to get in trouble?"

"He was only doing his job, ma'am."

The officer dithered, her hands sliding pages back and forth at random. "Um… do you think you'll be prosecuted?"

"I couldn't tell," Steve said, and without thinking about it let his face settle into his best "confused twenty-first century tourist" expression. "It's up to the judge."

"Oh, I'm sure—"

"Ready to go?"

The detective was back, well under five minutes, and silent as a ghost.

"Yes. Thank you, ma'am. Have a good day."

The detective held the door open for Steve and followed him out into the street. "Am I on an Avenger black list now?"

"Why would you be?"

The detective smiled, just a quirk of the lip, but quite enough to make his eyes gleam. "I got some shit for it, if you can believe that."

Steve hoped so. "We do important work."

"Yeah."

"You don't agree?"

"I deeply appreciate your commitment to keeping alien laser beams from razing the city. It's helping me sleep at night, knowing you are out there, keeping the planet safe." He nodded at the window pane on which someone has painstakingly written out terms of discounts and special offers in white, loopy letters. "So, thank you for your service, I guess."

The door to the coffeeshop were heavier than Steve expected; hardly something that would cause him trouble, but there was a moment of unanticipated weight that took him by surprise. The detective marched right in and planted himself in line, hip resting against the cupcake display.

Steve stared at the cupcakes, warm gold on the bottom and gleaming white on top. "It has its drawbacks."

There was a single person in line before them, agonizing over the selection of cakes to go with his coffee. He must have been there for a while now, because the barista's smile was decidedly plastic as she listed the choices available, likely for the second time in the row.

"Alien lasers, crumbling buildings, screaming, death, that sort of thing?"

Steve couldn't contest those were significant drawbacks, no. In the meantime the man in front of them had made his choice and made off with a glistening yellow cupcake, leaving the barista free to exchange the plastic smile for an eyeroll.

"Hi, what can I get you?" she asked, and her smile bloomed when she noticed the detective.

"Hi. Large latte to go, please."

"Black coffee," Steve said. "I'm paying," he added when the detective reached for his wallet.

"Thanks, but no."

"I insist."

"You can insist all you want, until we see a judge I'm not taking your money."

"If I was giving you money, you would know it. This is just a coffee."

"Pal, if you want to buy me coffee, come by after we've seen the judge. Until then I've got this." The detective flashed a hint of white teeth over his shoulder, as the barista left them for the coffee machine, and tapped the counter with a five dollar bill.

Steve felt his face heat up. "I wasn't—"

"Oh. Well, that's out of the way. What did you want to talk about?"

The barista set two paper cups in front of them and smiled at Detective Barnes again as she stamped his buy ten get one free card. "Do you want anything with it? We have a fresh cupcake selection."

"Not today, thanks." The detective dropped his change in the tip jar and picked up his cup, waiting for Steve to hand over his cash and decline a cupcake and a loyalty card.

"You come here often?"

"We're trying to get a coffeemaker with a milk steamer installed at the precinct, but those things are hard to justify on an expense request form, when we already have the drip and the vending machine. There's a tin at the station – if you have any unmarked bills, feel free to drop them in the next time you're there." The detective grinned as he stirred in a couple of packets of sugar, disrupting the cocoa design, before topping off the cup with a plastic lid and walking away from the condiment station.

Steve followed, one packet of sugar and a lid, to a tiny table with a good view of the street outside, and settled in his chair, feeling a little like a rotisserie chicken, with the way the detective was watching him.

"Being arrested really rattled you, huh?"

"It doesn't happen very often these days."

"I can only imagine."

"Look—we were just doing our job."

"And that's great. You're doing great. When aliens start raining from the sky I'm very happy to let you have the run of the place."

"You don't thing Hydra should be eradicated?"

"Pal, I would be happy to see each of the bastards hung. Hanged." The detective leaned forward over the tiny table, far enough the Steve could count the eyelashes reflected in his grey eyes. "But I am a goddamned cop, so my job is to get them in front of a jury and give the prosecution enough hard evidence to make it official."

Steve bit back a comment about due process, and moved on. "That's what we're trying to do."

"Excepting the hard evidence part."

"We have evidence. We wouldn't go in anywhere without evidence. Just because it's not always aliens and lasers—"

"Consider sticking to those, then."

"And let Hydra run free?"

"And what, pray tell, is your plan for when you find them? Kill them where they stand? A neat laser between the eyes? Maybe an explosion that rips them apart? Good old fashioned bullet to the head?"

"No, of course not!"

"Then what?"

"Call the police. That's your job."

"Interesting. So you would call, I would arrive, you'd wave your shield at ten injured men and tell me, 'officer, these bad people are bad, take these bad people to prison immediately', then you would depart. Meanwhile, I would think to myself 'well, a man in a Captain America suit said they are all bad people and a man in a Captain America suit, whom I have only  seen in the dim light of flickering flames, would _never_ lie to a police officer, so off to prison they go.' It's not like the cosplay community hasn't produced astounding work, in the costuming department. Or make-up. Or facial prosthetics."

"We don't chase after small fry, the people we stop are high-profile."

"Because every operation is manned by high-profile criminals only, right? They're definitely the ones who clean and dust and stack crates, and slip hundreds into the pockets of beat cops to look the other way, and those people definitely all have wiki crime pages."

Steve blinked. "Is there a wiki crime?" the would be so helpful.

"Figure of speech, mainly, but I wouldn't be surprised." The detective, looked down at his coffee, swirled it, pressed his lips to the cap. His eyes closed as he took a sip, and didn't open until after he licked his lips. "But suppose you are in pursuit of someone who tried to get away, possibly because of the overwhelming hard evidence and not, weirdly enough, because someone was trying to hit him on the head with a hard object. Suppose only Black Widow is at the scene. She's been known to lie."

"Natasha is trustworthy."

"There's quite a few files online that say otherwise."

"She was the one who released them!"

"Shit was going down, maybe it was either release the files, or end up shot from orbit."

Steve set his coffee firmly on the table, stretched the grip out of his fingers, and grit his teeth. "She chose to put an end to Hydra!"

"If she'd done that, we wouldn't be sitting here, now would we." The detective drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table, winced, and folded his hands in his lap. "She exposed them, and that's great, she's my hero, I got some solid leads and even convictions out of the dump, but free-falling data about who contributed to the giant fucking laser in the sky is not exactly damning evidence."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, come on. You don't have to be Tony fucking Stark to notice that the whole 'shot from orbit' wasn't done in some secret barn in Bugfuck Oklahoma, by a racist redneck society. That was a plan hundreds, thousands of people have worked on, one that every higher-up had to sign off on. You think all of them were Hydra? SHIELD wanted those things in orbit, and I don't think they wanted the lasers pointing at the fucking sky."

"It was fucked up," Steve, to his own embarrassment, growled.

"No arguments there." The detective picked up his cup again, stroked the rim of the cap with his finger. "The thing is, you were also in those files. And she was. And a whole lot of other people. And we can't just take those reports at face value, because even if there was a list explicitly marking off all secret Hydra agents, which there wasn't, all of SHIELD contributed to a lot of the fucked-up shit, you and Romanoff included." The detective leaned back in his chair, took a sip of his coffee and pinned Steve in place with a look. "I'm not trying to fight you. We both want to fuck those octopus assholes up, right? But I gotta do it by the book, or else I won't get anywhere. You don't have that problem, and that's great for you, but last I checked there is one of you, so maybe don't try and act like you're all alone in this."

"We got off on the wrong foot," Steve said, desperate to plug the swirling hole of silence that followed. "We didn't mean to mess up you investigation, but the warehouse was definitely Hydra."

"Yeah… except now we can't exactly prove it."

"There were Hydra-made weapons there."

"High-tech weapons. Just like there were in the back of truck we seized recently, driven by a small-time crook with no Hydra affiliation, who wasn't bright enough to recognize the designs he was peddling. And now that the whole thing burned down, all the evidence of who was or wasn't affiliated with Hydra has gone."

"You have witnesses."

"One of them with bad enough concussion he's in an induced coma, and his testimony may end up inadmissible. The rest will claim they never heard of Hydra, that they acquired the weapons illegally, sure, but they have no idea they were tied to anything bigger. They have good lawyers, who will claim in court there is no evidence of a crime having even been committed by them specifically. Other than having been assaulted, which is in fact the opposite of a crime."

"We have surveillance videos and we have their emails. Tony broke into their servers, planted bugs—"

"Motherfucker!" Detective Barnes all but climbed onto the table, so that his mercurial eyes eclipsed the coffeeshop. "You did not just say that to me!" he hissed through clenched teeth.

"What? I said we were sure—"

The detective sat back and continued, in a furious whisper, "You just fucking admitted you fucking tampered with the computers! The one goddamned thing we could have maybe salvaged from the fucking fire is now fucking guaranteed to be thrown out as unreliable! Fuck!"

"Tony is very good at what he does, he definitely didn't leave evidence."

"He didn't need to, now that you admitted it to a fucking detective!"

"This was supposed to be off the record."

"Off the record is a pinkie-promise that I won't bring it up as being the official position of the fucking office of the fucking Avengers, not that I'm going to ignore the fact I can't fucking salvage anything about that case! Fuck!" The detective pressed both his hands against his face. "Fucking shit, fuck, god fucking damn it!"

"I'll testify—"

"Yeah, but the Avengers are not exactly famed for being impartial witnesses! You think your testimony is going to be worth a damn? You beat up those guys, of course you're going to swear up and down they deserved it for being bad!"

"They did deserve it!"

"Well gee, if only our criminal justice system was reliant on the convictions of the man wearing flag-colored armor, what an improvement that would be!"

Both of Barnes' hands were on the table now, flat against the wooden surface, fingers spread. There was an oil painting there, in the contrast between the honey-colored wood, and the cool metal of his left hand, made resplendent by the sunshine, and it was such a striking image it was a good minute before Steve could raise his eyes again.

"And it doesn't bother you? That they are out there? It doesn't bother you that they almost killed off millions of people? For all you know, you could have been one of them. Hydra cannot be allowed to roam free."

"Then why the fuck did you destroy the giant kill machines in the first place? Why not leave them flying and just reprogram to target members of Hydra instead, if you're so goddamned sure?"

Steve's teeth ground together. "We do not murder people."

"No, you just drop in on them, so that you have an excuse to beat them to death when they shoot at you in self-defense!"

"We do not go in blind. We research. We prepare. We don't go in to fight just anybody. Our targets are well-defined."

"Maybe. Or maybe you just assume that whoever's in the building is Hydra and can be treated the same. Heaven forbid we had a guy undercover." Barnes swirled the contents of his coffee and sighed. "Look—I need to go back to work. My point is, it's great that you had the balls to blow up that fucked-up mega-drone. I'm grateful. I'm so grateful you have no idea. But if you're going to be setting warehouses on fire on my turf, just to beat up ex-Hydra suppliers, then we're going to have a problem."

"I will not rest until all of Hydra is dead or captured."

"If it's the latter, I hope you're okay with most of Hydra walking away, because you left no evidence to prosecute them. Hate to be the one to tell you this, but carrying a card is not a prosecutable offence, even when it comes to Nazi organizations. If the former… well, I gotta tell you, Cap, sometimes people who deserve to get murdered get murdered, and I still have to find the person who did it, and I have to go after them. Making the distinction is not my goddamned job."

"That helps you sleep at night?"

"I figure I lose the same amount of sleep as you do over your collateral damage."

"We try to save everyone. Sometimes we can't. We learn to live with that. How do you live with the fact your friends are shooting innocent people in their own homes?"

Barnes' whole face set in a stone mask. His hand, the flesh one, dipped into his pocket, but before Steve could tense it came up with a phone. A moment later Steve found himself looking at a photo of a blackened corpse.

"Tell you what, you self-righteous prick, I will tell you exactly how I live with asshole _colleagues_ at his fucking funeral. Maybe you can then tell his kids just how good your _research_ was."

The slam of the door caused a tremble to rush through the floor, up through the soles of Steve's boots and further on, rippling down the rows of mugs and the till. The barista looked up from her book, met Steve's eyes and then her gaze slid to the window.

Steve finished his coffee, one lukewarm mouthful after another. He nodded at the barista on his way out, and went back home.

## Thursday, May 26th

"I am a little impressed we got a court date so soon," Natasha told Steve.

Steve was at the time being a little impressed with the interior of the court building, so it was a moment before he responded. "Does it usually take much longer?"

"You have no idea."

"Do you think it will go quicker if I sue someone?" Tony said, pausing in his vigorous fingering of his phone. "They're bound to see us if I sue."

"Maybe don't do that?" Sam decided to tag along, mostly as emotional support, and was now propping a wall.

"We've been here all day!"

"We arrived forty minutes ago."

"And we are still here!"

"Mr. Stark, this is not a courtroom, but I would advise you to hold your tongue," their lawyer said, not looking up from her phone. "Judge Weatherwax will not appreciate your sense of humor."

"There you go."

"Whatever."

It took another twenty minutes, during which Tony very nearly imploded, until the doors were finally opened and the Avengers, minus Sam, were invited into a small room, crowded with leather-bound volumes and golden lettering forming recondite titles. Steve took a deep breath and forced himself to exhale through his nose. It was _May_. The windows opened!

"Oh good lord," the judge, a tiny old lady in a severe bun on top of her head and a plain black dress, said when she saw them. "I was half-expecting it to be a joke."

"No, ma'am." The district attorney was an unassuming grey fellow, glasses and a pinstripe suit, very mousy. Steve googled the man the night before, found that per available materials the mousy exterior was an effective camouflage, and this had been the summary provided by the lawyer as well: "the man is a shark, do not give him an inch, because he will bite your head off."

"Well, sit, and let's have it." The judge straightened in her seat, whose backrest extended well over her head, giving her the appearance of a queen of her domain. Steve quickly took a seat and tried, per instructions, to keep any and all emotion from his face.

But before anyone could open their mouth, the frail silence was unspun by a gentle rap on the door. The judge called out and then Detective Barnes slid in, no trace of leather jacket or heavy boots. A gunmetal grey suit hugged him ankle to shoulder, the white stripes of cuffs and collar catching the sunlight almost as well as the prosthetic did.

"Good morning, Your Honor."

"Detective. I didn't expect you here today."

"I asked him to come along, ma'am. Hope that's okay – Detective Barnes is the arresting officer," the DA said.

"Why am I not surprised. Let's get on with it, then."

The DA opened the file in his lap, nudged his glasses further up his nose, and in a measured voice began to read. "Two days ago the Avengers attacked a warehouse in Brooklyn. According to Detective Barnes the warehouse has been used as a hideout for several members of Hydra, and it was also attached to other criminal organizations. Four suspects have been apprehended; each of them required medical attention after the Avengers' intervention. Due to the fire that broke out as a result of the assault, most of the evidence tying any particular persons to the contraband, which included illegal weaponry and explosives, was destroyed. Due to lack of evidence the suspects will be released from custody as soon as their condition allows. We would therefore like to charge the individuals present, namely Anthony Stark, Captain Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff with obstruction of justice and destruction of property."

"Destruction of property on behalf of?"

"The warehouse is the property of an off-shore corporation that came up in some of the SHIELD files, Your Honor," Detective Barnes piped up.

"And the four men apprehended?"

"Three of them have ties to known Hydra members. They are not cooperating, and considering the history of captured Hydra soldiers, they are restrained and monitored constantly, but since there is no hard evidence they did anything except possibly wear badges, they will be released. The fourth has no known affiliations to Hydra, he might have been a recent recruit, or a member of a gang running errands. He's got history of assault and two priors, but nothing current. He will also be released."

"And you are confident, Detective, that there was evidence of criminal activity in the warehouse?"

"We found three computers. They are still being analyzed, but our techs think the casings were equipped with magnetic devices, which went off a moment before the rest of the charges. So far they didn't manage to salvage anything. That's significantly more forethought than gangs usually put into security, and more technology, so I do think something bigger was going on there, and the technology and methods used does suggest Hydra. Or SHIELD."

The judge stared at the detective. "So you have nothing concrete."

"I spent two months surveilling that warehouse. I have photographs placing the four perps inside that warehouse. I know the shipment – and we now know it was weapons – was delivered three nights ago to that same warehouse. I have photos of that, too."

"Still, a warehouse of weaponry was destroyed, that's a good thing."

"It would be better if I could find the supplier. There were crates in the warehouse, but the information we do have suggests regular deliveries were being set-up. Now most of the neighbors had gone to ground, it could be weeks, months before we get another lead."

"What do you say to that, Captain Rogers? Weeks, possibly months of setback in finding a supplier. I don't suppose you know where the weapons came from?"

"We were hoping to find out from the contents of the warehouse," Steve said, eyes on the judge.

"What brought you to that warehouse in the first place?"

Steve fixed his expression in a manner Natasha assured him was placating, and repeated the line they agreed upon. "We monitor lines of communication exposed during the file dump. That particular warehouse came up a few times in the context of Hydra weapons. Since we are dedicated to erasing Hydra, we thought we would investigate and do something about it."

Somewhere behind his back Detective Barnes scoffed.

"A problem, Detective?"

"There's no indication the guns were Hydra, specifically. There was enough high-tech debris left after the Battle of New York for every other gang to develop a science division overnight, not to mention that same file dump which put a significant amount of schematics out into the web. There is little to suggest that this particular warehouse was specifically associated with Hydra, past some superficial ties to SHIELD files."

"And you believe the Avengers' involvement… derailed your investigation?"

"Their involvement certainly set a lot of valuable evidence on fire."

"No no no." Tony leaned in, waving aside the lawyer, who rolled her eyes. "No. I was there. I have pictures. There were charges all over. Anything could have triggered those."

"Nearby explosions and flying in through the window certainly didn't help! Our bomb squad tells me that the security system was specifically designed to target excessive enthusiasm in entering."

"I expect you didn't think to coordinate with the police?" the judge asked Steve.

"We treat all information regarding Hydra as top priority. That said—" Steve began and really, what was it about his voice that immediately set off panic triggers in the ears of lawyers.

"Your Honor, Captain Rogers is not admitting to any wrongdoing, his commitment to eradicating—"

To be fair, he was about to admit they may have killed a man, these kind of things would be serious to a lawyer. "—we scanned the warehouse prior to engaging, however we—"

"Your Honor!" Detective Barnes was on his feet and wedged between Steve and Natasha, directly in front of the judge. "Captain Rogers is about to confess he thinks the attack has killed a man."

The lawyer's head dropped onto her hands. Natasha and Tony both turned to look at him, and there was the barest waft of the sweet scent of victory, the one that only came from having surprised Natasha. Even if, now that Steve thought about it, it might have been a bad idea.

"We found a body in the warehouse, which has been identified as one of my informants. The body has been damaged by the explosion, but we know that he had been dead for at least half a day by that time." The detective's hands were folded behind his back, with the flesh hand gripping the metal palm.

The judge turned to look at Steve. "Were you about to confess that, Captain Rogers?"

"Yes."

"I am assuming you didn't know there was a body in the warehouse at the time of the attack."

"We did not."

"So how did you learn it was there?"

"I told him," the detective said. "Captain Rogers came to see me yesterday, with a request to keep the conversation off-record."

The judge's expression did not change, did not waver; her focused gaze moved from Steve to the detective. "And in that off-record conversation you decided to just reveal that human remains have been found?"

"We had a disagreement about the importance of preserving evidence." The detective kept his eyes firmly on the judge, away from Steve's. "Regardless of the Avengers' involvement in his death, the explosion and fire significantly lowers the odds of the murderer being found."

"Did you know about this?" the judge asked the DA, who flushed from the tip of his twitching nose to the tip of his whiskers.

"Yes. It was not immediately pertinent."

"A murder investigation is always pertinent," the judge told him in an icy tone. "That changes things." It sure did. Steve could sense their lawyer sprout hardened scales and grow piranha-teeth.

"Preliminary findings suggest the man was killed inside the warehouse, shortly after the delivery, and stuffed in one of the crates."

"The warehouse explosion was not caused by my clients, so they cannot be held responsible for the damage it did. Or we can just cut this whole thing short and admit that Detective Barnes is biased against my clients and is willing to go to any lengths to see them punished for things they had no control over."

"We could, but that wouldn't really change much, now would it, because the explosives were set to detonate in the event of an impact such as a tank, the Hulk, or Iron Man, meaning the bombs could only have been triggered by the Avengers, and because of that explosion a murderer will almost certainly walk free." Detective Barnes said and returned to his chair. "Yeah, no one died in the raid that night. Doesn't mean there was no collateral damage."

"Circumstantial evidence, at best, and I know for a fact that bomb squad would take longer than two days to make such sweeping statements."

Detective Barnes let out a guffaw and settled in his chair. "Ma'am, I wish you the best of luck going down that road. Sure, the bomb squad usually takes longer than that, but that's because they need to put together the remains of the bomb to find the detonators. In this case, the triggers survived the explosion mostly unscathed, because they were set far from the charges."

"We can prove you have a grudge against my clients, dating back to the Battle of New York."

"Again: good luck trying."

"Excuse me, what's this about a grudge?" Tony said, suddenly on red alert. "And New York? We saved New York, despite SHIELD's best efforts."

"Your attorney is referring to the fact that I lost my arm in the Battle of New York, specifically that the event can be traced to an alien being thrown at me during the fight." The detective met Steve's eyes and cocked his head. "I'm not exactly grateful for that, but I've been through the whole panel of psychology tests, and I have been cleared for duty."

"I see." The judge leaned back in her chair, caught Steve's eye, and bore into his brain with the force of a planet-destroying laser. "Do you have anything you want to add?" she asked the lawyer and the DA.

"No, your honor," the two of them chorused.

"Very well then." The judge shuffled the papers in front of her. "I'm inclined to side with the police on this matter."

No unexpected. The lawyer and Tony both began a tirade, only to be silenced by the judge's raised hand.

"Detective Barnes has, from what I can tell, acted entirely within his professional capacity. I'm sure he can appreciate the valuable contribution to society that your… initiative is, but at the same time, destroying evidence of crimes in the name of chasing down small fry is not making anyone safer, and seeing how you were caught in the act, letting you off will not be a good precedent."

"Does that mean we'll go on trial?" Natasha asked, perfectly in control. Listening to her no one would suspect it was potentially her own trial she was asking about.

"Depends." The judge nodded at the DA.

"We're prepared to offer you a deal," the DA said. "Eighty hours of community service, for each of you, and a mandatory course in criminology, to be completed within a year."

The lawyer leaned forward, catching the DA's eye. "I expect this deal includes no charges."

"None."

The woman nodded. "My clients accept. No charges, community service. Mandatory education. I assume the education comes with caveats?"

"There're are several community colleges that offer criminology degrees, but I expect the expense is not going to be an obstacle, so feel free to enroll in any program approved for law enforcement. The expectation is that the Avengers are able to demonstrate a working knowledge of crime-scene processing, and what constitutes a probable cause. Seeing how only Mr. Stark, Miss Romanoff and Captain Rogers are under indictment, the course is only mandatory for them, however we strongly recommend that all active Avengers take part, to avoid such situations in the future."

"Excellent." The judge holds out her hand and waits until the DA puts a sheet of paper in it. She scans it and then extends it to the lawyer. "Have your clients sign this. I would much rather not see any of you here again, so consider coordinating your efforts with the local police, yes? If no one has any further comments, I believe your half-hour is done, we can all be on our way."

Steve rose from his chair and followed their lawyer out into the corridor, where he was immediately accosted by Sam.

"And?"

"We got community service and a mandatory college course. Altogether could be fun, criminology is interesting." Natasha's heels clicked out pure defiance on the stone floors. "They actually recommend we all go."

Sam let out a short laugh. "I'm trying to picture Thor in a classroom."

"Thor is the least of our problems, he is always eager to learn, but we're going to have a problem with Tony," Steve said, nodding at the lawyer currently being assaulted by their pet inventor, and his barrage of furiously whispered demands.

"Yeah, that's going to be… interesting. I volunteer to not wrangle him," Sam said.

"So you're going?"

"Sure. They do have a point, and it cannot hurt to have the police on our side."

"Unbelievable," Natasha told him, the corner of her lip quirking the special way it only ever did for Sam, "that you would side with the police over us."

"I'm not siding with the police, I'm saying our job will be easier if they are on our side."

"So you say."

Somewhere down the corridor a phone rang. Steve was quite practiced at ignoring phone calls, considering how many of them happened all around him every minute of every day, but then Detective Barnes answered, and suddenly his brain just… tuned in.

"Hey Dugan."

"They are cutting them loose right now."

"What?"

"Nothing we can do, they have not been charged, we have nothing to hold them, they got lawyers arguing the police surveillance of their hospital stay counts as holding."

"They're seriously fucking injured!"

"They are all going AMA."

"Fuck! Is anyone picking any of them up?"

"You didn't hear it from me, but a little bird may have gone snooping and heard an address that's not on any files. 53 Caroll street, apartment 12."

"Dum Dum – you are the best. Thanks."

"How's the Avenger thing going?"

"Well, their lollipops and stickers are being withheld, Stark is having a tantrum, but I'm sure someone will get back around to sucking their dicks soon enough. I'll talk to you later."

Barnes disconnected and immediately put the phone back to his ear. Unfortunately he was ambling away as he did, and the voice on the other end was becoming to faint to make out. "Lee, hey. Listen I got a tip one of the guys might be at 53 Caroll, apartment 12. Be or have something, dunno which. Can you do some digging, get me the owner, and a feel for the neighborhood? I'll be there soon as I can."

An answer from the other end made Barnes roll his eyes and tuck his left hand into the pocket of his slacks.

"I would love to go there right now, but I'm scheduled to testify in five minutes. Yeah, that B&E. The owner was going before me, and he gets talkative. It shouldn't take more than an hour though, I don't got that much to say. Yeah, thanks. I mean it!"

"Steve? You alright, man?"

Sam and Natasha were both giving him looks, the kind that, in Natasha's case strongly implied she was reading his mind, in Sam's that he was gearing up for the next bout of craziness that was sure to follow. Stark was off to the side, now furiously arguing against the merits of criminology as well as lack of time on his part to commit to any additional degrees. He was losing that one, chiefly to himself, and the lawyer was too calculating to remind him he was being billed for the minutes he was spending on the pros and cons of learning how to interpret evidence, with no one but him providing any input.

Steve shook his head, meanwhile, and looked at Sam. "I'm fine. It's nothing."

"Want to throw toilet paper at his house?" Sam asked, nodding at the detective, who was now being ushered into an open courthouse door by a bored looking bailiff.

"Toilet paper whose house? The detective?" Stark materialized by Sam's side, phone in his hand. "Yes, which stores deliver toilet paper by the bucket?"

"He lives in an apartment building," Natasha said.

"Spray-paint his car?"

"Anything that costs money or more than a water hose to repair is off the table."

"Need I remind you we will have to do community service because of him? Can't we just donate to, I don't know, citizens for new uniforms? There must be something."

"His precinct is apparently saving up for a decent coffee maker," Steve said absently, only remembering why he shouldn't have said it after he'd already done the damage.

"Coffee maker!"

"Wait, Tony—"

"I'll tell the lawyer," Sam said, and took of running in the opposite direction, to where their lawyer was chatting up another briefcase-toting individual.

"On the bright side, they probably won't arrest him for that," Natasha said, staring after Sam, who was only just apprehending Tony.

"What, bribing a police station that arrested him?"

"It's hardly a bribe."

"Do you know how much those things cost?" Steve knew exactly how much they cost. He refused to buy one for his apartment in DC for that very reason, and in fact was boycotting the otherwise preferable cappuccinos for that very reason.

"Point taken. Let me talk to him." Natasha clicked her way down the corridor, visibly turning heads, and sexualities, along the way, and Steve slipped his phone out of his pocket and pulled up a map of New York. Caroll street was not far from the courthouse; he could be there in ten minutes. He was unarmed, so he could probably get away with taking a peek at whatever was happening inside without ruffing too many feathers.

Eleven minutes later he was dropping down a fire escape just around the corner of where the phone told him Caroll 53 was. Steady now; he was here to have a look, no more.

The layout of the building was familiar somehow… none of it looked old enough to be his old building, but Clint's house had to have used a similar blueprint. Apartment twelve would be two stories off the ground, right as the building took a sharp left, with a window in the side-alley, one that opened just far enough from the fire escape to constitute a fire hazard. No one was around, and mercifully the solitary camera in sight was facing the other way. Steve leapt, sprang off the wall opposite, grabbed the parapet and pulled himself up onto the windowsill of the second story, and up again, to the open window of what had better be apartment twelve.

There was no movement inside, though someone was prowling down the corridor. Steve moved the curtains aside and stepped onto the worn carpet. The apartment was rather worn down and smelled like it, too;  there was a small fireplace covered by a rusty grill, the source of the faint tang of iron, the carpet was bald in places, the wallpaper faded, but all of it was in reasonable enough condition. Steve stepped around an armchair, cataloguing the sparse books on the shelves, only to come face-to-face with the open, unseeing eyes of a fresh corpse and a puddle of blood collected in his lap.

"Fuck," he said, just as the prowling outside resolved to a door being pushed open, and an elderly man – Detective Lee, from the other night – stepping through, a uniformed cop at his side. Both zeroed in on Steve the moment they crossed the threshold, before their gazes slid, inevitably, to the body, then back to Steve.

"Goddamn it, Barnes," Detective Lee said, rising his gun just high enough to indicate he meant business. "Why do you have to be right all the goddamned time."


	3. It's Just a Coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve acknowledges the officer had a good reason to arrest him. Steve is patient. Steve is respectful.
> 
> Steve is seconds away from snapping the handcuffs.

## Thursday, May 26th

Steve could break out of the handcuffs, if he really needed to. Hell, he could pull the bar out of the table, or the table out of the floor. The whole holding system wasn't exactly bank-level security, and he had found out the hard way that was the way to keep him contained. These handcuffs he could snap, these doors he could kick down; hell, he could rip them out of the wall by pulling too hard on the handle. So he wasn't contained. He was… respecting a gentleman's agreement between tensile strength of steel and the tearing capacity of a supersoldier.

But even that didn't matter, because Steve was a rule-abiding member of society and society had rules, some of which included handcuffs and waiting. He was patient. He was respectful of the due process and the police force.

The rhythm he was drumming against the table, was sort of etched in the table, three horizontal scratches, three vertical, slant, slant, slant, asterisk. That was musical notation, Steve was pretty sure.

He could fold the table in half. It was sturdy, reinforced with metal, but he had bent metal bars before. The table didn't represent a significant challenge. He would have to take care of his handcuffs first, rip out the bar to which he was cuffed, but the table would fold.

Not the he would do anything of the sort. Steve was patient and respectful, and he was there for a legitimate reason.

The wall was covered with one hundred twenty-six whole tiles. The thirty-seventh and sixty-eight were cracked. The color, a muted green, not unattractive on its own, clashed horribly with the bright blue floor.

Steve pondered the cracks. Possibly the tiles broke because the room on the other side was intended to be accessible to sound, and there were small holes underneath them? Just like in all the cop shows, there was a mirror on the wall separating the interrogation room from the susurrus rising in the adjacent space. At least it was susurrus where Steve was sitting; his hearing was acute, but even with his enhanced perception picking up sound through a wall designed to direct sound one way was an accomplishment, which meant that the noise on the other side had to have straight up in the racket category. Steve kept his eyes on his own wrists, where the metal strained against his skin, and didn't look up, not even when he heard his own moniker mentioned, closely followed by his identity being questioned, and then a slew of speculation. The mirror he was facing was hiding no less than eight not very discreet people, shuffling, whispering, expressing incredulity and disbelief at the fact that Captain America himself was at the precinct twice in the span of three days!

Steve sighed and bent his head to rub the bridge of his nose.

The bang of the door startled him back into a sitting position, both hands folded in front of him, but no one had entered. Not his room, anyway. The eight people behind the glass jumped, as one, quieted, and turned to look at the newcomer.

"Everybody out," came the voice of a Detective Barnes. "I got enough shit for disrespecting the celebrities, don't add to it. Lorraine, you were supposed to get me the stuff they took off him."

"I have it!" Steve recognized the voice of the American Idol hopeful, as well as the sound of something papery being squeezed. "Phone, keys, three and a half dollars in change."

"Thank you, Lorraine. Now everybody out."

The group slithered out into the corridor, chastised. The door slammed again, and someone strode the scant distance from the viewing room to the interrogation room door and walked in. Steve did his best to maintain eye contact with his reflection in the mirror, a task made considerably harder when the detective pulled out the chair Steve had been kicking for the past half-hour and sat down. They were of a height, the two of them; the detective's bright eyes were now directly in Steve's line of sight, obscuring the mirror, though for all practical purposes doing nothing to ameliorate the effect.

"You just can't stay out of trouble, can you?" Barnes said, huffed, really.

He was still wearing the gunmetal grey suit, minus the jacket. The chain holding his badge around his neck was pinned to his tie with a broad, silver bar. Cufflinks of similar design were gleaming at his wrists.

"I… unfortunately, no. Sorry."

Detective Barnes put down a recorder on the table and pressed a button.

"Detective James Barnes, it is Thursday, 26th of May 2018, one thirty pm. I am in the room with Captain Steve Rogers. Captain Rogers, this interview will be recorded. You have a right to remain silent, and to have your attorney present. Do you understand these rights?"

"I don't have to say anything, I have a right to an attorney," Steve parroted. "I watch TV."

"And yet you have chosen to talk to anyone who would listen, and not call for an attorney."

"I haven't done anything."

"That's very much debatable." The detective set a large envelope on the table, opened it, and withdrew a phone that Steve recognized as his own, a handful of coins, a single dollar bill and a set of keys with a little falcon charm hanging off them. Next he reached into his own pocket, pulled out a small key, and reached for the cuffs chaining Steve to the table. His fingertips brushed the inside of Steve's wrists as he unlocked them, just enough to let Steve feel the faintest thrum of alien pulse against his skin.

"Am I free to go?"

Behind the detective the viewing room was filling in again, by people taking great care to set their feet exactly right on the ugly, presumably just as blue, plastic floors, so that the spectacle could resume. Barnes did not take his eyes off Steve, but the faintest twitch of his eyebrow revealed he could tell they had an audience.

"I'd prefer if you answered a few questions first, but yeah. You are free to go."

Steve sat up straight and refrained from rubbing his wrists. The faint, red line where the steel dug into his skin was already paling; it would be gone in minutes. "What do you need?"

"You were arrested in an apartment on Caroll 53, standing over the body of an unidentified man. Can you identify him?"

"No."

"Then why were you in his apartment?"

Steve grimaced. "I thought I might ask him some questions. About his… activities."

"Activities?"

"His connection to the warehouse and Hydra weapons."

"What made you think that man had a connection to the warehouse?"

That was what Natasha called a trick question. "I heard."

"Heard?"

Natasha's seminars on interrogation were coming in weirdly handy. "I heard you mention the address. You were on the phone at the courthouse."

"That's on me, shouldn't have been on the phone in a clearly acoustically well-designed, freely accessible corridor, filled with a lot of chatter," Barnes muttered to himself. "Why did you go to an address you heard me mention on the phone?"

"The warehouse had a connection to Hydra, I thought I might get information about their other bases of operation."

"Great. Did the victim say anything useful?"

"I did not get to ask anything, he was dead when I got there."

Barnes continued to stare directly at Steve, damn him. "Did you touch anything?"

"The windowsill, when I was getting in—"

Detective Barnes paused the recording and went for the phone. He stared at the screen for a few moments, then his thumb swiped across its buttons, and suddenly the pattern of light it emitted changed from the muted grey of Steve's lock screen to the bright orange of the sunset wallpaper.

That was definitely not right. "How did you—"

The detective gave him a look as put the phone to his ear. "Ms. Romanoff, hi. This is Detective Barnes. I'm afraid Captain Rogers is being stupid again."

There was a faint, exasperated silence from the other end, then Natasha said, "I assume he is at your precinct?"

"Honestly, I would be happy to check if forty-eight hours in holding helps, but I have been yelled at for attempting that before, so do you think you can get a lawyer to get him?"

Natasha sighed deeply. "Please don't arrest him again. I will have a lawyer there in twenty minutes. Do not let him incriminate himself any further, and I will consider it a personal favor."

"Will do my best, but considering Captain Rogers' efforts, I cannot make any promises. Have a good day, ma'am."

Steve scowled at the phone first, the detective second. "How was I incriminating myself?"

"Breaking and entering tends to be a felony."

"I did not break anything," Steve muttered, folding his arms. "I just said I touched the windowsill."

"Yeah, a second story windowsill, well out of reach of a fire exit, that you touched to enter the apartment of a man you've already admitted was a total stranger." Barnes leaned back and mirrored Steve's pose. "So, what's up?"

"How did you get into my phone?"

"Lucky guess."

"It's a six-digit number, there is quite a few combinations to go through."

"Your mom's birthday," Barnes said quietly, so low Steve would bet money the people on the other side of the mirror did not hear, and good, because he felt his entire body stiffen in preparation for a fight. "You're famous, you know. This information is public knowledge."

"You just happened to memorize my ma's birthday?"

Barnes smiled with the very corners of his pink lips. "As it happens, we have that in common. Other than the year. Fun little coincidence."

"Yeah." Steve unfolded his hands and rested his elbows in the table. "Fun. Last time you said you'd come looking for me if members of Hydra start dropping dead."

"Don't get any ideas. First of all, we didn't find a Hydra badge at the scene. Second, the time of death was estimated to be between forty minutes and an hour before Lee arrived, and I happen to know exactly where you were at the time."

"I could have contracted it."

"As if you'd outsource a killing."

"I'm smart. I have money," Steve said, and honestly? His insides were bright and bubbly and full of the round-animals-are-round feeling that Sam introduced him to. Internet was so helpful, and such vast quantities of it were entirely useless for anything but imparting the warm, bubbly feeling.

Was it weird he was having the warm, bubbly feeling during a conversation about murder? Because that was happening, right now, Steve was staring this man in the eye and hearing him explore the possibility that Steve was capable of paying to have someone killed.

Steve loved it.

"The most likely killer you'd turn to was with you at the time," Barnes was saying, toying with Steve's phone.

"I wouldn't call Natasha a contract killer."

"No, I wouldn't either, which is why I'm not really suspecting you." Barnes grinned then – his was an unfairly familiar grin, considering this was the first time Steve was seeing it – and started rocking the chair on its hind legs. "I bet you're thrilled to be back here."

"Somewhat."

"Off the record," Barnes said, "I have been discouraged from arresting you again."

"You didn't arrest me this time. Your partner did."

"True, but somehow giving him ideas is somehow still my fault. That's not the point. I don't exactly want to be the guy that doesn't do what he's ordered to do, so, unless you have some pressing business here, maybe don't make me?"

Steve listened as the room behind the mirror emptied at the behest of someone loud and authoritative; he listened the displeased mumblings of the scattered group, their dragging zombie footsteps, just slow enough to remain within hearing range, then leaned in and, very quietly, said: "you said I could buy you a coffee after the hearing."

The chair under Detective Barnes collapsed backwards as the man scrambled to remain standing. He stared at Steve like a deer in headlights, his bright eyes wide and surprised. "What—"

"I'll call," Steve promised, grinning, as the doors opened and his very exasperated lawyer beckoned for him to get out. Behind her stood a man whose grim expression was not unlike Steve's commanding officer's back in the war, a man most likely in charge of the precinct. Steve was not up to date on police uniforms or ranks, but the sheer number of colors over his breast was intimidating, and the stony yet scorching look being thrown over his shoulder, at Detective Barnes, indicated this was, in fact, the man behind the discouraging Barnes experienced.

"Captain Rogers please accept our sincere apologies for this incident," the officer – captain –said, with the very same inflection a rock would use to chide its young.

For his part, and it was just because he could, Steve poured all the acting skills he had into a very surprised expression, one that had benefitted greatly from years under Natasha's tutelage. "Why? I have been standing over a dead body; it would be unreasonable not to arrest anyone standing over a dead body, Captain America or no."

Unlike the detective, the captain did not turn bright red, but he did give Steve the stare of a man too old to be getting this shit from cocky youngsters, while the lawyer let out the beginnings of a very unprofessional groan. She was too well paid to let it out in its entirety, though god only knew what it cost her to hold it in as she ushered him through a bullpen full of focused, determined professionals, all of whom refused to raise their gaze from their very important… cat memes. She nudged Steve along, past a printer, past a bulletin board, past an empty desk with and embossed plaque reading DET. J. BARNES, her no-nonsense attitude bulldozing their way through the precinct's corridors, down the stairs and into a waiting limousine.

The dam finally broke in the car, and the complaints, pricey legal advice and admonishments did not stop flowing throughout the hour-long ride – thank you, New York traffic – out the parking garage and all the way to the office floors, and the secluded corridor in which the residents switched elevators.

"Of course, ma'am. I will keep that in mind," Steve said as the elevator door slid closed, finally separating him from one of New York's finest legal minds.

Steve let out a deep sigh and immediately dug his fingers into the knot at his neck. God, but the tie was suffocating, and he wore body armor for a living. He stepped out of the elevator into the lobby of his floor and emptied his pockets onto the kitchen counter: phone, two dollars in a variety of coins, a single dollar bill, and finally a blue-and-white cardboard rectangle with the logo of the police department and a phone number.

"Detective James Barnes," Steve read out loud. His apartment did not respond, thank god, but it did seem to like the sound. "Brooklyn, 107th precinct."

Steve formally attributed his sticky fingers to the arthritis he'd used to suffer from. At times it got so bad he could barely hold a pencil in his hand, and no doctor had offered a suggestion better than the pickpocket who took pity on the emptiness of Steve's. He'd ended up being a decent sort, had given back the pencil stub, and then offered advice on keeping one's fingers nimble in cold weather, which proved invaluable and the beginning of a whole new way to fight injustice. Steve had relieved many a bully of his wallet, purely to make the asshole look for it in a dumpster, and today he swiped a card off a policeman's desk.

Granted, it was made to be given away, but Steve had a feeling Arty would have been so proud of him.

Steve shucked the suit, exchanged it for comfortable slacks and a T-shirt, then picked up his phone. Natasha was very emphatic about switching to something more modern, something with a touch pad and fingerprint or facial recognition, but Steve resisted. He liked the buttons, liked the way writing required physical give from the phone. Besides, it wasn't like the new smartphones were inaccessible if you knew the password.

He should also change his password, apparently.

Steve carefully copied the numbers from the card into his phone. They stood out, obviously: bright characters against the black backdrop of the phone screen would stand out. Pressing the call button felt like leaping out of a plane. His heart stuttered at the ring, and then again, and then…

"Barnes."

"Hello, detective."

"Holy shit," Detective Barnes breathed into the receiver, "You actually called."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"To be honest, I thought you were messing with me," he said, and Steve could picture his expression exactly: the small smile in the corner of his mouth, the gleam in his eyes. Steve would bet he was lounging against whatever surface his elbow was propped on.

"I am, a little bit. Not about the coffee. I do want to buy you that coffee."

On the other end the detective seemed to be mulling it over. "But in a strictly platonic way," he said, an assertion backed with enough conviction that Steve couldn't help but react to the challenge it posed.

"No," Steve said before he could think about it, tried to take it back, but the attempt to back-pedal slammed right into what his mouth was already saying. "No. Not strictly platonic," emerged, as opposed to the intended "I mean, yes, of course, strictly platonic," and Steve found himself gaping at his reflection in the polished kitchen cupboards, listening to the whistle of a slowly released breath.

"Okay…"

Holy shit, Steve thought. Holy shit. He'd really said it. He said it. He said _it_. To another human being. On the phone. Fuck, he said it _on the phone_!

On the other end of the line something clicked, like a door being closed.

"Captain Rogers—"

"I didn't mean—"

"Hey. It's fine." The detective's voice dropped a notch, and mellowed, curling the words into soft shapes which quelled at least a fraction of the anxiety. "Don't worry about a thing. If you want to get me that coffee, I'll be having lunch at that café by the precinct tomorrow at noon. If you don't show up, no big deal, something came up. I'll get it."

Steve gripped the phone and breathed, breathed, breathed. It was fine.

"It's just coffee." Detective Barnes said quietly. "Just a coffee at lunch. It doesn't have to mean anything." Steve listened to him breathe, in and out. "It'd be good to see you tomorrow, either way."

The line disconnected, and Steve forced himself to set the phone down.

Tomorrow. Less than twenty-four hours away.

Steve was patient. Steve was collected. Steve was calm.

Steve made for the punching bags in the gym, only pausing an hour into the workout to change out of his slacks.

## Friday, May 27th

"It is just a coffee," Steve thought, again and again, until the "it" and the "coffee" became a "coffeeet", and he could fit no other thought in his mind, at least until his phone beeped to remind him that it was noon, and he was staring at the window of the coffee shop from across the street.

Detective Barnes was engrossed in whatever was on his phone. His boot was tapping the leg of the chair every five seconds as he read, synchronized with the sweeps of his thumb across the screen. There was a sandwich on the table, with a few bites missing, and a glass of water. It was just past noon.

Steve squared his shoulders, crossed the street, and pushed the door. There was no line. And goddamn it, the detective looked up when the door opened, looked him right in the eye and smiled, before looking down at his phone again, and Steve was left face-to-face with the barista, with no backup.

"Hi."

"Hi, welcome to the Bean. What can I get you?"

"A… latte. And a large black coffee."

"Here or take-away?"

Steve stared at her blankly, the ten-dollar bill extended over the counter. He could, theoretically, take both to go, walk out of the store hide behind a dumpster and pick a fight with the first person who dropped their trash next to it, rather than inside. That would make the inside of his chest feel less jittery. Littering was not cool, it was a major problem and needed to be discouraged at all cost. "Here. Please."

"Coming right up."

Steve waited, watched her poke at the machine, fill the ladle with ground coffee, push the ladle into its slot, and set a tiny cup under it. A button was pressed, the machine hissed, and the girl whirled, grabbed a cup and picked up a coffee pot with her other hand. That cup, once filled, ended up on the counter in front of Steve, with a tiny cookie on the side, while she went back to the machine, to steam milk.

The foam spilled into another cup, the heart on top took shape, and quicksilver poured into the dip of Steve's spine.

It only took so long to get two cups of coffee.

Steve took a deep breath, carefully lifted both beverages, turned, and sat opposite the detective.

"Thanks," Barnes said, smiling. "I'm glad you made it."

"Didn't I just hear you wanted to see less of me yesterday?"

"Less of you at the precinct. I don't mind seeing you in coffeeshops."

"It didn't exactly go swimmingly the last time."

"Yeah." Barnes looked around, drummed his fingers against the table, bit his lip, and just as Steve was about to say something else, he swiveled his head back to Steve, pinned him in place with a look, and good god, how was it even possible, that he could do that with a look.

"I owe you an apology."

Steve blinked.

"I figure, I should… Well, the last time we were here I showed you that picture. I fucked up and I'm sorry."

"I didn't think that's something you can just show anyone."

Barnes grimaced. "That too. I'd appreciate it if you kept that quiet. But mostly it was just a shitty thing to do."

"What about the funeral? His kids?"

"Don't worry about it. Look – I was trying to make you feel bad, okay? I'm not proud of it. I let you rile me up, and I hit back. I'm sorry. Nothing that happened to him was your fault, and it was shitty of me to imply it was."

"It could have been," Steve said, reluctantly. "I mean. I'm not the most technical person, but there must be technology that could hide a person from infrared."

"Yeah. But we know he was dead before the explosion." He was playing with the cookie with his metal hand, just sliding it across the edge of his cup back and forth, collecting specks of foam.

"When's his funeral?" Steve asked.

"Look—"

"I'd like to attend, if that's okay with you."

"What?"

"I… noticed he was wearing dog tags. He was a vet?"

"Yeah."

"I'm guessing he wasn't doing so great."

Barnes looked away. "We met in the hospital, when I got the arm. He was… not really over the deployment. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't sit still long enough to figure out what was wrong. Couldn't get the help he needed."

"He was your friend?"

"Not really. Maybe. I don't think we've had a full conversation about stuff that wasn't drugs or guns. He crashed in my basement when it got really cold."

"What was his name?"

"Frank Simpson."

"He really has kids?"

Barnes grimaced, again. "Yeah. Two. They aren't, weren't close. He was deployed when they were little, and when he got back his girl had someone else. They spoke, occasionally, but he wasn't stable, she didn't want him coming around too often, he didn't want to meet in public places."

"What was he doing for you?"

This time the grimace melted into a crooked smile. "This an interrogation?"

"Why would I interrogate you?"

"Dunno, valuable Brooklyn-based intel?"

"You may be overestimating the Hydra presence in Brooklyn."

"My aim would be zero, zero Hydra presence in Brooklyn. So the fact that there's, like, _some_ bugs the fuck outta me."

"I hear that." Steve took a sip of his coffee and ate the cookie. It was good, both the coffee and the cookie. The menu on the window said something about medium roast, and Peruvian, and juicy, and whatever prolonged finish was, it was cocoa. But this wasn't really about coffee. Steve set the cup down and made an effort to look Barnes in the eye. "About this coffee."

"What, you need me to go to the till and pay for it?"

Steve's determined Irish genes made a show of flooding his face with pink. "No, of course not. I invited you."

Barnes fucking needed to stop doing that thing with his eyes, where he would look at him and that look would flay him, dig through muscle and bone to get at the fragile entrails, and fill them with a light froth that made Steve feel like he was floating.

"Look—this doesn't have to be complicated. At all," he said. The remainder of the cookie was in his hand again, surfing the milk foam.

"Do you want it to be complicated?"

"You mindreading now?"

Steve huffed and flexed his fingers against the table. "I'm—I mean I'm not? Detective—"

"My name is Bucky," Barnes said. "I went out with people who called me detective before. It's usually not a good sign."

"Unlike arresting them on the first date?"

"Seems to have gotten me a free coffee, at least."

"Bucky." Steve liked the sound of that. It was ridiculous: conjured up a picture of a chubby kid with skinned knees and a gap-toothed grin, possibly a slingshot or ice-cream cone in his hand, not a serious New York detective. His parents were not blessed with foresight. "I'm Steve."

"No nicknames?"

"People tend to call me Cap."

Bucky tilted his head, just enough that the precarious whorl of hair on his forehead trembled against the touch of gravity. "Nah, that doesn't work for me."

"Doesn't work for you?"

"I don't need another CO, Philips is quite enough."

"Huh," Steve said.

"I'm gonna be straight with you. In a manner of speaking, I mean, it's hella twisted in all other ways." Bucky rested his elbows on the table. "I am fucking dying to see if this could be a thing. Us. Me an' you." He stopped himself then. "Could this be a thing?"

"I don't know. My job, your job—"

Bucky cocked his head the other way and smiled. "You ever had a boyfriend before?"

"Is this where we are, already? This century moves fast."

"Yeah, once we figured out how to make electricity dance, everything just became the mad slide down a polished sheet of ice. Most people don't even stop for stop signs these days, trust me, I know."

"As long as they fasten their seatbelts," Steve said with a straight face, and Bucky burst out laughing.

"You know, you can keep on dancing around it, but there's only so far we can get without you talking to me."

Steve grinned. "Isn't that something you tell a suspect? To establish rapport?"

"Fuck." Bucky grimaced. "Would you believe that's the third time someone went and told me that on a date?"

Steve did his best to ignore the part about this being a date. "If you always interrogate your dates, I'm not really surprised." His best had the purchasing power of a Lincoln penny.

"I've done more interrogations than dates."

"Me too. And I've done three interrogations."

"Oh god, this is going to be a disaster, ain't it," Bucky said, but even as he said that he was starting to grin.

"Most of the things I touch end up being one," Steve told his empty cup, but then put it down and took a deep breath. "But I'm famous for throwing myself into disasters, and it mostly works out."

"Good to know." Bucky tipped the cup right over his face, and when he set it back down there was a spot of foam on the tip of his nose, a perfect swirl of white and beige. Steve was about to point it out, but in that same moment Bucky's phone rang. "Shit!"

"Barnes, fucking hell, where are you? Philips is looking for you, the autopsy report is back, and IT has checked over the files, they've just sent them up."

"Fuck, I'm sorry, I lost track of time. I'll be right there! Can you score me a CD port? Lorraine usually hogs it, she's not in today, but it might be on her desk."

"Yeah, maybe. Where are you, anyway?"

Bucky cast a quick look at Steve, half grinning, half grimacing. "Lunch. I'll be there in fifteen."

Steve looked at his own phone guiltily. Yep, sure as could be, it's been nearly an hour since he entered the café. Lunch hours maybe somewhat laxer these days, but clearly not always.

"Looks like I gotta go." Bucky finished his coffee in two gulps and stood. "Thanks for this. Listen – if you're free, how about we try this weekend?"

"This weekend as in tomorrow?"

"That works. I'll give you a call later," Bucky said, tapping at his phone one-handed.

"Wait!"

Bucky turned, arms tangled in his jacket. "Yeah?"

"You've got foam on your nose."

"And you only tell me that now?" Bucky groused, rubbing the back of his hand against his entire face. "Really?" And then he was running his tongue over his hand, and then nuzzling at it, and that, that was definitely something Steve would expect of a Bucky, and that revelation seeped the tension out of his bones. "Thanks."

"No problem."

"See you tomorrow." Bucky threw a salute his way, and he was gone, in a breeze of warm wind and sunshine.

Steve stayed where he was and finished his cold Peruvian coffee one sip at a time. By the final mouthful his hands had almost stopped shaking. He had a date. A date!

## Friday, May 27th

The station was a brisk jog away from the café, and the weather was nice enough that Bucky could ignore a fancy coif bobbing over a guy pissing behind a trash can – what a weird neighborhood it was, that most of the cases of public urination were bored college kids – and burst into the station enveloped in the sunny Brooklyn spring aura. There was a murderer on a loose, a crime scene to pick apart and hundreds of secret spy files to dig through, and he had a date: it was a glorious morning to be a detective.

Of course, he was greeted at the door by Kitty, whose anxious shakes made her seem like she was in a state of permanently phasing through the material world. "Barnes, the captain asked for you twice now."

And just like that, the frost of winter set in. "Fuck."

"Language."

"Do not even start that with me."

Bucky hopped to it, taking the stairs two at a time, waved at Dugan and knocked on the Captain's door. "Sir?"

"Get in and close the door."

Fuck.

"What is this?" Philips asked, holding up a stack of paper.

"My report of the Avengers case."

"And what's that bit here, written in in crayon?"

"It's a green gel pen, sir."

"Barnes, I have a whole room full of hardcopies of old case files and not enough computer-savvy hands to do the digitizing, do not test me."

"I needed to get a copy of the report quick, on account of the court date, and the only thing Lorraine had on her desk was the gel pen, I had no choice." That ended up biting him in the ass when it turned out the printer would only scan bits of the green, but lessons learned, Bucky put in a requisition for more normal pens, ones without glitter.

"What stopped you from making it readable? Would that have taken too much of your precious time?"

Yep, Philips'd lost his glasses again. "I was in a hurry, sir, because the DA—"

"I don't even care. Just tell me what it says."

Bucky grimaced. "It says the evidence is compromised, including the computers."

"Excuse me?"

"Captain Rogers admitted, off the record, that they 'prepared' for the mission by accessing the computers on site."

"According to this very same report those computers were not connected to any networks."

"Apparently not a problem for Iron Man. I don't have details, but that thing awhile back had witness mentioning dozens of Iron Man suits, which then exploded, so they were likely on autopilot. I guess a tiny drone with a USB stick and a good data plan could have done the job."

"Jesus H. Christ, how is that man still at large."

"Billions and billions of dollars, sir." The little drones were topping the list of stuff losing Bucky sleep. He hoped to hell Stark had the common sense to keep that shit out of the sight of any cameras and press releases, because one sighting and it was goodbye admissible evidence, sorry, your honor, those files must have been planted, my client had no idea they were there, please remove the drives from the evidence, up yours, detective, get some real evidence, preferably in cuneiform.

Ugh, technology.

"How big a deal was that site?"

"Pretty big. We found ten massive crates of weapons, and the setup was elaborate, it could have easily handled three times that. It looks like it was being set up as a base of operations."

"And the interrogation…?"

"The lawyers claimed the supervision at the hospital counted as the forty-eight hours. We had to cut the suspects loose without."

Philips did not blink, his face did not move, but the sense of having displeased a superior somehow still chose to drag Bucky's gut down.

"Look through the files," the Captain said. "If there's any active leads by tonight, keep at it. If not, give the whole thing to major crimes and move on."

"Sir—"

"We don't have the resources to handle a potentially big deal. You would have needed backup, if it's as big as you think."

"It's my case. I spent three months on this already," Bucky said, fists clenched. "I can't just drop it, I will find something—"

"If all other crime in Brooklyn stops for the night, you can continue. If not, you will hand the case over to major crimes and wash your hands of it, is that clear?"

Bucky gritted his molars and yet somehow still managed to verbalize a "Yes, sir."

"Then I'm sure you're busy enough. You have ten hours to either show me something that's manageable or you can pick up the signed case transfer form from my desk. Dismissed."

Bucky marched out of the Captain's office and immediately dove into the welcoming arms of the coffee pot, whose fat belly was just catching the final drops of a fresh brew. He poured himself a cup, topped it with creamer and sugar, sipped, winced, and started digging through his pockets. He must have a spare dollar in these pants, come on. Finally, after a good minute of rifling through the lint and shreds of receipts he kept there, he found a coin: it was only fifty cents, but what the hell. He looked around for the can, which contained the cappuccino machine fund, and found it on the shelf by the cartons of milk.

Some asshole, probably Lorraine, pasted a picture of him on the side. He has no idea who's taken it, but the image was of him napping at his desk, and subtitled "if you can't handle me at my nappiest, you don't deserve me at my finest". The pun seemed to be doing its job, as the can was heavier than it'd been yesterday, so Bucky was going to let this unlawful use of his image for fundraising purposes slide. For now.

He dropped his coin through the slot, cheered by the sound of it hitting bills. The can was getting nice and heavy, which gave him endless hope: in its weight gain lay the promise of easy access to cappuccinos and lattes, and the end of the dripping nightmare that was barely coffee in the first place.

He was gauging the collected sum by weight and sound, hoping for some sixth-sense revelation, when someone heavy-set came to a stop a step or two behind Bucky and huffed out a laugh in the direction of the photo.

"What did Stone Face want?" Dugan asked.

"To give the warehouse to major crimes."

"What?!"

"Apparently we don't have the resources or something."

"Well…"

"Please just shut up."

"Let me know once you've seen the thing on your desk."

Bucky frowned, but took his coffee, leaned back just enough that his field of vision included his desk. "Motherfucker."

There were no CDs. Instead there was a battered laptop, perched right on top of three open case files, connected to a slightly singed hard-drive by a handful of cables, and on top of that there was the coroner's report.

"Fuck," Barnes said.

"Hope your lunchbreak was good," Dugan said, patting him on the shoulder. "Heard you met Captain Rogers."

"What?"

"You seem to be on good terms, do you think I can get an autograph, my boy would piss his pants if I could get his Cap shield signed—"

"Fuck, I knew I should have gone somewhere else."

"Yeah, you blew that one, and hard. Monty was out to get us those new fancy cupcakes, saw you both. He had to haul ass all the way to the bakery instead, he said it seemed intense. Seriously, what is up with you and Rogers?"

"Nothing."

"C'mon!" Dugan whined, and it was such a hilarious sound coming out of such a large man, Bucky found himself giggling.

"Jesus, you are just the worst. I'll see what I can do about the signature, but fair warning, if he says no, it's a no."

"Fine, fine." Dugan threw his hands in the air. "I gotta run."

"Wait!" Bucky held out the coffee. "I forgot I just had one. Do you want it? It's got the new creamer you like."

"Sure. Have fun with the files! Charm Cap into signing shit for my kid!"

Bucky rolled his eyes at his back, but he did so fondly. Dugan was something else. A big, burly, gossip-filled something else. As soon as he was out of eyeshot, however, Bucky let out a soundless "fuck". God fucking damn it, how could he have been so stupid and meet Steve in the goddamned Bean. It was right there, half the cops coming in to work must've had a peek inside; they didn't even have to strain their detecting powers, he and Steve were sitting right there by the window!

Having gotten rid of the coffee, Bucky made himself a cup of tea, before returning to his desk. He moved the mortician's report aside, to check the post-it left by the IT department. "Do NOT plug the disc into anything else, do not plug anything you're not prepared to lose into the laptop, do not get your hopes up".

"Thanks," he muttered, crumpled up the little neon-pink note and dropped it into the trash, before sliding the laptop off the pile of cases and more into the general work area. The power button was easy to find, but pushing it yielded four solid minutes of booting time, during which he nearly vibrated off his chair. "Windows 2000, holy shit. It's not like I'm on a deadline here."

The computer did boot up, eventually, one groaning circuit at a time, which, as Bucky discovered, meant it freed up enough processors to allow displaying the explorer window, at a rate row of pixels per second.

"Fuck," Bucky said and nearly burned his tongue off by gulping the tea.

He started off with the folder helpfully labelled "expenses", only to discover that "expenses" was more of a creative collage of receipts, fragments of receipts, and scraps of invoices filed by the Mad Hatter. Whoever the accountant was, they didn't have access to an efficient scanner. Or a scanner, all the receipts were photographed, named by whatever phone was used, then dumped wholesale onto the drive. Once upon a time he might have gotten some use out of those, except thanks to the magic of magnets even the metadata was scrambled to hell and back.

Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose. Say what you will about drug dealers, at least those assholes kept meticulous notes about the money and goods passing through their hands.

Some hours into slogging through the hard drive Bucky had discovered symbols whose existence was only known to total nerds, the kind of people who paused the _Matrix_ to check out the codes running down the screen during the fight scenes. Interesting symbols, to be sure. Those would make a great backdrop to a cyber-adventure, if only the fat load of nothing wasn't laughing at him in his peripheral vision. There was a good chance all the bits he managed to assemble were in some sort of code, a code he wasn't going to break anytime soon, but that was fine that was okay, he didn't need that much. Just a name, maybe an address. Instead he had a calendar file, which was not nothing, but…

"Deliveries," Bucky muttered to himself. Deliveries on the 20th, the 12th, and 2nd, no indication of origin, of course, because why would there be.

Planned deliveries on the 1st of June, although what were the chances they would happen now? And that's assuming he was even reading this right, because the whole thing had been corrupted to hell and back by the fucking magnet, and god knows what else, if IT bothered to dig up this piece of junk.

"Barnes?" A hand landed on his shoulder. "You still alive?"

Lee, bless him, was holding a mug of coffee.

"That for me?"

"Wasn't really, but if you want it, you can have it."

"Thanks, man."

"How's that going?" Lee asked, nodding at the laptop.

"Well, I am this close to throwing the computer out the window, that's for damn sure. You've got the inventory from the warehouse?"

"Yes."

"Do we have any sort of list of when things arrived?"

"Scraps of one." Lee ruffled through the pile on his desk and came up with a handful of photographs. "That's it."

One of the photos was of a corner of a page, with a header reading "itemized", the second had a browned gradient bisected by a wavy line, and the final two might have had something printed on them, once upon a time, but the few letters visible despite the soot weren't adding up to anything substantial.

Bucky felt the will to live abandon its post, taking with it whatever kept his neck muscles from turning into jelly. His head dropped backwards, until he could see Dugan filing his paperwork upside-down. "Three months of my fucking life and those assholes blew up all the evidence. I want to shoot myself."

"Give it time."

"Make sure to name-drop the Avengers into my eulogy, will you?" Bucky muttered, as he slapped the laptop closed and reached for the autopsy report, desperate for a palate cleanser.

John Doe, approximately thirty-five years old, white. No tattoos or other distinguishing features. Six-foot nada, just under two hundred pounds. Two stab wounds to the front of the torso, first off-center, to the stomach, second to the chest, right above the heart. A couple of small cuts on the forearms, no other damage. Cause of death: exsanguination.

Bucky flipped the page to the photograph and stared. Two very clean, very precise stab wounds, delivered to the stomach and the chest, quick enough to distract the victim from protecting himself, and by the looks of this guy he would not hesitate to protect himself. There were no real signs of struggle in the apartment, so… he likely knew his attacker. Knew them well enough to let them in and keep his guard down long enough to get stabbed.

Or he'd been napping in his chair. Also possible.

Although, Bucky thought, and his ass left the chair as though on autopilot, if he had been napping, who would bother with the two stab wounds? So much easier to come up from behind and just slit his throat.

Lee raised his head just as Bucky was locking his computer and shrugging the gun harness on. "Where are you off to?"

"Morgue!" Bucky yelled, already halfway across the bullpen, a foot or so away from a collision with Frenchie and his tiny coffee press. He skipped down the stairs and burst out into what turned out to be a warm evening, thick with car exhausts and yelling.


End file.
